Preparing for War
by Night2Fall
Summary: There is much to do for the Crimson Raiders: damage needs repair, Eridium needs to be sold, bandits need a shot in the face and Pandora needs Vault Hunters, as a mysterious alien just happened to announce oncoming war. Quite an order for those who won the war against Hyperion. Rated mostly for language
1. Chapter 1: Repair

Chapter 1: Repair

ECHO-LOG #119:  
Sent by: Lilith [firehawkECHOpnd]  
To: cathater_axECHOhie ; blueforceECHOpnd ; salvadorgunfriendECHOpnd; 01011010ECHOnet ; gaigecarvupECHOed5 ; SPEAKERBOXECHOpnd ;  
Subject Matter: Return to Pandora

Lilith: Hey Killers! To make this short: We need you back here on Pandora. As fast as you can. The Vaults have to wait. We just came face to face with a... well... it was... an alien creature...

Patricia Tannis: I would advise you not to use the phrase 'creature' all too liberally, as it clearly undercuts the power and importance of whatever it now was, but if any of you ever heeded any of my advise it wouldn't be half as much fun to provide it. Judging by the semblance to statues found on Pandora this alien is bound to have close connections to the Eridians, although it is still way too early to tell decidedly if this was a real Eridian. For now I will name it The Watcher and I will furthermore refrain from using toothpicks until...

Lilith: Yes, erm, thank you for your well-grounded input, Doctor Tannis. Sorry, we're all still a wee bit shaken. Anyhow, head for Pandora. God only knows what's going to happen, but we best be prepared. We've accomplished quite something down here, but we can't exactly replace the six biggest badasses Pandora has ever seen...

Mr. Torgue: Are you talking about the Vault Hunters here? THAT MEANS YOU'RE ABSOLUTELY MOTHERF***ING RIGHT! If I remember correctly, we were handing out the OFFICIAL CERTIFICATES right after the tournament...

Lilith: Jessup! Get him out of here! And close the fucking door when you leave! No one enters this damned building until I tell you otherwise or you can kiss your sorry ass goodbye! [Deep Breathes] I'm sorry. Toil and trouble on our end. So, well, hope to see you soon. We'll keep ourselves busy!

* * *

Maya had always thought she knew Sanctuary well. After all, the so called city measured less than a square mile. She was aware that the buildings were merely welded on top of a spaceship, but as long as the engines kept them aloft, she hadn't put too many thoughts into the matter.

Upon her return however, she had learned of the network of engine rooms, hallways, crew quarters and storage rooms underneath the dusty streets. Climbing down into the bowels of Sanctuary for the second time now, she was relying entirely on signposts to get around the maze of rusty corridors. Flickering lamps lit the metallic tunnels, hardly high enough for a grown person to stand upright, the walls were coated in sturdy vents, leaking ductwork, badly isolated wires and control panels which kept an air of dignity and importance even under layers of dust and cobwebs.

The D.S.S Sanctuary had been buried in the ground for several decades and it showed. Badly. Whole sections of the ships interior were still blocked by earth and rubble. What had once been a mining vessel capable of hyperspace-jumps, had degenerated to a levitating platform with a rickety city on top. The only thing that actually worked, tirelessly and well, was the main engine and it only did so, because Scooter worked almost as tirelessly to keep it running. The mechanic constantly lamented, that no one, especially no females, ever really appreciated, that he kept the whole city from becoming a rather big grease spot in the Highlands, but if Maya had learned one thing on Pandora, it was that the universe simply wasn't a just place.

However now the Helios Space Station was gone from the sky, the remaining Hyperion-troops were laying down their weapons by the hundreds and the Crimson Raiders had time to muse and start to fix things, which had been held together by tape and dried spittle during wartime. And their flying city was definitely priority. It would be nigh impossible to restore the spaceship to its former glory, but turning it from a hovering town into a true flying fortress was a different matter.

Maya ducked under a rusty vent and entered the core room. It was a big, circular hall, filled to the brim with floodlights, cables, power-tools, schematics and stale pizza. Two deputized mechanics were lying in a corner, snoring and ignoring the sounds emanating from the adjacent tunnels and crawlspaces, hammering, the screech of metal saws and the buzz of welders.

"Scooter?", Maya called. The chief mechanic wasn't in sight, but during his time in the maze he had infamously developed the eerie skill to hear almost any word spoken inside the machinery.

It took less than a minute for Scooter to wriggle himself out of a crawlspace, warily putting his cap back on his head and brushing the worst remnants of rust and grease off his jacket. "Ye know, them say all these midgets around here got mutated or shit while digging for Dahl. But ye know what I think? I think Dahl brought them here on purpose! 'Cause no normal man can never work inside these damned crawlspaces!"

"I reckon they used drones for maintenance", Maya replied. "What's you status?"

Scooter scratched his neck with a wrench, while grabbing a piece of pizza with his free hand. "Status? Oh, really? I reported just yesterday. What she thinking we do down here, we can't all be inked witches with magical powers, things take their time." It took some effort, but he managed to rip a piece off the pizza and started to chew. "No offense, sorry, but Lily is starting to get on me nerves. Hard. Like Skag-crashing-against-yer-front-bumper-at-full-speed-hard."

"What kind of yesterday are we talking about?"

Scooter blinked in surprise. "Yesterday in like less than 12 hours ago."

"It's closer to a Pandoran-yesterday. You've been down here for three regular days. The lot of you. Do you ever sleep?" Maya was feeling a pang of worry. If the mechanic of all people collapsed from exhaustion, things could get a little hairy. There was no way of replacing him.

"Now that ye speak of it... I took some quick naps in the crawlspaces... I mean, ye're already lying on yer belly and stuff. Must've been a wee bit longer than me thought."

"So, what did you do in the last couple of days?"

Immediately the mechanic was back in his comfort zone, unfolding a big, blue schematic of the ship. "Alright, let's see. We've cleared decks four and five in Quadrant 2, they should be inhabitable by now, actually. In the center we dismantled a lot of electronics we won't need anymore. Ground-analysis, grinders and anything else from the mining business. Using the salvaged material to rig up all the handy stuff: Radar, deep space communication, motion trackers, all them beauties. Main engine is fully ready. Stabilizers fixed, no more twisting and turning when the winds get rough. Horizontal boosters are a big problem, cause they're hard to repair under the circumstances, but we got three of them running. Ah, yeah, three out of forty-five, but hey, if we'd have to make a little trip to the south we're definitely good to go."

"Anything else noteworthy?"

"Found a mummified Varkid. That was kinda creepy, but, well, happens and as far as me knows, old Shin Gutter is done puking so that's that." Scooter shrugged and pried loose another piece of pizza. "Got one little request though."

Maya smirked. "Fresh pizza?"

"That would be a bonus. Nah, what I was about to ask, it's about weapons, ye see, cause them guys what build this marvel weren't exactly intent on shooting things out of the sky, they wanted to get close and familiar with the dirt. So, this beauty ain't got no weaponry heavier than a rocket launcher. And as we are getting ready for war once more, I recommend we get ourselves some big ass guns."

"Oh. And where do you recommend we get them?" Lilith had mentioned by the bye that Scooter was lobbying for a salvage run he wasn't allowed to make until the machinery worked without him, but as Maya had just arrived a regular week prior she didn't know the details.

Scooter grinned. "I'd like to salvage the Soaring Dragon. There's at least one big anti-ship gun we know of and I'd bet the wreck holds some more _capital_ weaponry. And it ain't as if there's anyone left on Southern Shelf who would have made the run. But we need to be fast nonetheless", the mechanic continued and suddenly he sounded unusually serious. "Because this being Pandora no one can tell ye when this ice will melt and leave all them guns and all the fuel and whatnot on the bottom of the ocean. I mean, it would only take a day, and I don't need to trudge along, but someone better go there and at least secure the guns somehow, cause I tell ye once, ye don't want to recover nothing from waters that hold sharays."

Maya preferred not to investigate in terms of sharays. "Alright, I'll talk with Lilith." Actually, she would be willing to do the salvage run herself. Seeing everyone at work, citizens, Raiders and especially her fellow Vault Hunters, made her itchy and restless. Everyone was out there doing something, accomplishing something. And she was here, in Sanctuary, acting as Lilith's second-in-command, giving orders, coordinating missions on the ground, bartering with the smugglers. Although she was certainly allowed to leave whenever she wanted, it felt like the monastery all over again.

Yeah, leading from the top was dull business.

On the other side of the room, a lanky, thin man, wrapped in a red sash, crawled from a vent, dragging a mess of entangled cables with him. "Hey, Scooter, mind to come along? Davis is trying to bring the computer systems in Quadrant 3 back to life, but I'd really prefer you to be there in case the kid screws up."

"Mordecai?!" Maya couldn't keep herself from shouting out loud. Granted, she hadn't seen the sniper since returning to Pandora, but she had thought him to be off on a look-out mission or something...

Mordecai turned and flashed her a wry smile. "Hey there, Maya. Nice to see you back."

"What the hell are you doing down here?"

"Well, Scooter needed thin and scrawny people to navigate the crawlspaces and Lil' has given him permission to basically impress anyone fitting the description. Which of course includes my humble self." The sniper made a face, but laughed quickly. "At least it's interesting and meaningful work and it definitely keeps me sober."

"Just yer bird is kinda unnerving", Scooter chimed in. "Flying around the maze, scaring people to death..."

Mordecai shrugged. "As far as I know, no one has died yet because of Talon and what's wrong with a young little bird being curious?"

"I won't answer that", the mechanic grumbled. "Alright then, report is over, we gotta go back to work and you can be damn sure we do it properly!"

"That's good to hear. Keep up the nice work, soldier."

Scooter gave a wry grin. "Don't do that, will ye. That sounds too much like Roland."

Maya lowered her head. "Sorry."

"Well then, don't forget me little request." And at an impossible speed the mechanic weaved back into the crawlspace and the last thing Maya saw of him were his worn boots. Mordecai gave her a nod, before following Scooter.

The siren ducked out of the core room, heading back to the hatch that led to sunlight and fresh air and the city of Sanctuary. She reappeared on town square, from below the obelisk. The sun was setting and the air was fresh and clear. Somewhere in the distance Claptrap was beat-boxing. People were coming and going, chattering, but the depressed and pessimistic mood was mostly gone. While walking over to the Crimson Raiders HQ Maya heard excited gossip about goods flown in by the latest smuggler transport ("Tomatoes! God, I almost forgot that they are not _supposed_ to be blue."), about the latest episode of Moxxi's Circle of Slaughter ("...threw his empty Tediore straight into the cockpit of this Copter! Ka-boom! That was like amazing.") and about the local fauna and its impact on human life ("A Thresher ate my cousin."). A Raider was pulling guard duty at the entrance of the HQ and saluted, when Maya entered.

The first floor was eerily quiet, since Tannis had relocated to Digistruct Peak. All the better. Maya could let her guard down, at least concerning insane xeno-archaeologists with syringes trying to get a tissue sample at all the wrong moments.

Upstairs, Lilith was sitting on the edge of the Holo-Table, talking into an ECHO: "You can try that, but I tell you, save the resources. If you're lucky, she finds the tracker and leaves it in the wasteland. If you're unlucky, she finds it and pins it to a Stalker. No, I'm quite sure she will be back. I mean, you were... Oh, you weren't. Right. Well, it was as much an epiphany to her as to us. Probably more so. How often have you been saved from certain death by an almighty alien? Hm, impressive. I recommend you quit drinking. Yes, she can get her weapons. What's the fuss anyhow? This is Pandora and if she's not armed when she leaves, she'll be when she returns! For crying out loud, there are operational firearms in the Skag-heaps." With an annoyed movement Lilith ended the conversation and turned to face Maya. " 'Sup?"

"You're letting Athena go?", the blue haired siren asked.

Lilith heaved a deep sigh and threw the ECHO on the next table. "If we're supposed to trust each other, we can just as well start straight away, can't we? Not to mention I don't like to have her around. Just... bad memories. And I'm sure she will come back, if you're worried about that."

"Why?"

"I can't put my finger on it, but this alien thing affected her more deeply than she is willing to show."

"Any ideas what she'll do with her time on the loose?"

"How am I supposed to know? Probably itching to get back at killing people. Anyhow, Sanctuary. How is Scooter and everybody else down there?"

* * *

A/N: For clarification: The above will form the frame story for a series of short stories, involving... basically everyone. Maya and Lilith will get a mention in most of them, but rest assured that all the chapters will be connected in one way or another. Also, this is my first piece of English writing, so every criticism concerning grammar or spelling is highly appreciated. Thanks for reading :D


	2. Chapter 2: Reconciliation

Chapter 2: Reconciliation

* * *

Spoilers for **Tales from the Borderlands** ye be warned, here we go

* * *

"Alright now, high command has sanctioned your little trip", Marshall Friedman announced, when he stepped into the corridor. "Three days out, then she wants you back here in Sanctuary."

Athena had known, even before the Marshall had entered. It had been easy to overhear Friedman talking to Lilith via ECHO. She rose from her bunk and waited calmly for the tanned lawman to unlock her cell. "Thank you, I guess."

Friedman chuckled. "You're _thanking_ me for letting you back on one of the deadliest known planets? Well, you're welcome."

It would have been so easy to leave, once the latch had detracted. She would just have needed to run. She would have cleared the building before the Marshall noticed. And she would have been inside the Fast Travel system before anyone raised an alarm.

But Athena was tired of running. Apart from the obvious fact that she didn't want the Crimson Raiders on her heels yet again, the events following her capture had left her emotionally drained. The retelling of her involvement in the Elpis incident (twice) had filled here with guilt and self-abhorrence once again. The intervention of The Watcher had left her utterly shocked and in turmoil. And the reunion with Claptrap had just been another reminder of all the wrong she had done in her time.

She needed to gather her thoughts, to find peace.

And therefore she had asked for leave from the little prison cell the Raiders had generously given to her. Just a short little leave to set everything straight.

Athena followed the Marshall back into his small office. The walls hid behind several layers of wanted posters, a rocking chair stood behind a huge desk and another, much more comfortable bunk was set up in the corner of the room. Had Nisha had a similar office in Lynchwood?

"Okay, one physical shield, one plasma-sword, two storage-units, one civilian, one for weaponry", Friedman announced, while piling the objects on the desk. "That's all. Sign here, please."

Athena had been halfway to the door and turned slowly. "Is this some kind of joke?"

"Yeah, sure it is. No signature needed."

"I'm getting back my _weapons_?"

"Wasn't my idea, but Lilith decided to trust you." Friedman shrugged. "Quite impressive, given that she wanted you shot dead two weeks back."

Adding another item to the list of things she didn't understand, Athena quickly gathered up her gear. Technically she was now fully capable of running for it, but there was no immediate reason to do so. Her odds of getting any answers about this alien decreased tenfold with every mile she veered away from Sanctuary.

"Remember, three days!", the Marshall pointed out.

"Don't you worry, I will definitely miss your kind and comfortable accommodations", Athena muttered and headed out of the door. The second Friedman turned his gaze away from her, she started to run. She turned left, weaving through the pedestrians like an obstacle course, took the stairs to the town square three at a time, jumped over Claptrap who had accidently rolled in her path and then she stood in Pierce Station, selecting Hollow Point from the Fast Travel system, hardly out of breath.

"Here we go", the assassin whispered, before dissolving into a stream of data, her mind travelling through the all too familiar blue tunnel and less than five minutes after Friedman had unlocked her cell, Athena was standing in Hollow Point, blinking her eyes to adjust to the darkness inside the cavern.

Until now, she had thought getting off Sanctuary would be her main problem, but slowly it dawned on her that the task ahead was much, much more difficult. Suddenly, Athena was afraid, a kind of fear that caught her completely off-guard, because her instructors at Atlas hadn't trained her to ignore this kind of anxiety.

The fear of dealing with consequences.

No wonder why the instructors had never even mentioned it.

Athena glanced down the road and spotted the lights emanating from the local branch of Scooter's Garage. The shutters were still up, she could hear the sound of an angle grinder and all of it resulted in an elusive, tugging feeling at her heart.

She couldn't bring herself to walk over just yet, so she spun on her heels and headed for the Purple Skag bar. Perhaps a drink would calm her down sufficiently. The bouncer at the door gave her an inviting smile; clearly, he was new to Hollow Point.

"Holy Crawmerax and all his attendant offspring!", the bartender shouted, the second Athena entered the bar. "Look who's back in town!"

The assassin glared, but the man behind the counter just flashed her a grin. He was simply happy to see one of his patrons, he didn't mean to alert a mob of armed people that had just been waiting for the call. Something else she hadn't grown quite accustomed to. The majority of Hollow Point above a certain level of sanity was quite friendly actually. All of them had a criminal background worthy of Pandora, but they held together in an amiable 'we're-all-sitting-in-the-same-boat' fashion, as long as one didn't get on the wrong side of them or someone paid them to do otherwise.

"Good to see you again!", the barman continued, while Athena quickly scanned the bar for hostiles, before taking a seat at the counter. "And in one piece, come to that. First one's free! Here, I've got some Zaford-whiskey left..."

Another patron at the bar cleared his throat loudly and deliberately.

"Oh, bugger off!", the bartender exclaimed. "I'm not forcing it down your throat and as long as I'm alive I still have a saying in what I sell in my bar!"

The man at the counter calmly drew a pistol. "As long as you're alive", he repeated. His drawling accent immediately marked him as a member of the Hodunk Clan. "Now, as long as I'm controlling your life, I'm sure I've got a say as well. Get rid of anything even remotely Zaford-ish right _now._ "

There was a gunshot, some shattered glass and a strange whining sound, when the barman activated a shocker in the Hodunk's barstool. The Clan member instinctively pulled the trigger, but the shot went wide, before he was thrown bodily off his seat, still twisting and gasping on the floor. The pistol had dropped from his grip.

"Won't be trying that again, will you?!", the bartender shouted, while the bouncer entered, lazily grabbed the troublemakers leg and dragged him outside. Athena carefully rose from her own stool and leaned against the bar, not touching the footrest either for safety reasons.

"I love these", the barman continued, gesturing to the smoking seat and pouring Athena's drink at the same time. "Very handy. Springs rigged them up for me. Said something along the line of no more killing than necessary. Clever girl. Well, you of all should know."

Athena pressed her lips together, feeling a tingling sensation in her chest just by hearing the name spoken out loud. Springs. Janey Springs. Quickly she grabbed the freshly poured drink and quaffed it off. The alcohol burned in her mouth and warmed her stomach, but it did nothing to the increasing nervousness.

She had been gone for more than a month. She had lost her ECHO but that shouldn't have kept her from calling. She had been on the run from two of the deadliest people on the planet but somehow she could have tried to make contact, to explain, to apologize. As it was, she had left Hollow Point amazing two days before her own wedding without even leaving a note behind. Mere hours before the Slab King in person showed his face in town. What would Janey have made of this? How would she react when seeing her again?

Athena frankly didn't know and it was terrifying.

There was no one else she could go to, no one to talk with, no one to trust. Meeting Janey had been the only good thing to happen to her in her whole, brutal, miserable life. And what if Janey decided to pack her in after this episode? After all, she had ample reasons: Athena had lied, run off, never even tried to contact her...

"Another?", the barman asked compassionately.

Slowly Athena shook her head, idly turning the empty glass in her fingers.

In the end it all boiled down to two options really: She could confront Janey or she could return to Sanctuary with her tail between her legs. The interesting question was if the latter was worse than rejection.

She was tired, so tired of running. There was so much weighing her down, so many burdens and so much confusion. When she and Janey had returned to Pandora, her life had appeared to slow down, to give her time to rest and let go. And it had worked, for years, no bounty hunts, no more fighting than what was called for on Pandora, she had taken a job with the delivery service, even her nightmares had started to fade away. Until she had agreed to watch over the fosterlings of old Felix.

She longed for that peaceful life. More so for Janey.

Abruptly she swirled around and headed for the door.

She had marched off to combat time and time again and never had she been as anxious as now, walking down the empty streets of Hollow Point to the garage. It would have been easy, so easy, to turn and run. Delaying what in Athena's mind had already become the inevitable.

Carefully she peeked into the garage and felt another tug in her chest, when she spotted Janey. The junk dealer had her back turned towards the entrance, leaning against a work bench, and was chatting with a customer who was inspecting his newly repaired Outrunner. For what seemed like eternity, Athena just stood and watched and listened to Janey's voice, as she spoke of shock absorbers, reinforced cockpits and an atmosphere in which people could simply burn gasoline to power their machines.

It was a disturbingly peaceful scene on this planet of fire and blood.

Eventually Athena shuffled closer, without making a sound, but somehow Janey noticed or felt or whatnot and she stopped midsentence and spun around, pistol in hand. Athena raised her shield reflexively, but Janey still hadn't developed the Pandoran custom of shooting away without further ado and no bullets flew. The two women simply stood and looked at each other, Janeys expression quickly changing from surprise to disbelief to sorrow to a twisted mixture of emotion that Athena couldn't interpret and she didn't want to, quickly lowering her shield and looking at her boots.

"Who's that?", the customer asked curiously, peeking over Janeys shoulder. Another Hodunk, judging by the accent. What were those bastards doing in force in Hollow Point anyhow? "Never seen her in town. Do you know..."

"Out", Janey commanded, her voice cold and challenging, her gaze still fixed on Athena who doubled over in shock. "Come back tomorrow if you want your Runner, but for today I'm closed."

"Hey, lady, the car is right here and it looks good and ready for road war", the Hodunk complained, while Athena had to breath very deeply in order to calm herself, realizing the cold command to leave hadn't been directed at her.

Janey pointed her pistol in the vague direction of her customer, still refusing to let Athena out of her eyesight. "Ah, but you'll leave nonetheless, won't you? You don't want to rebuff me, remember, because if you do that, you rebuff the whole franchise of Scooter's Garage and thereby Scooter himself. And as Scooter is currently working for the Crimson Raiders, rebuffing him..."

The Hodunk made a run for it.

"Catch-a-Ride!", Janey called after him. She tossed the pistol aside carelessly (a stray shot went off and hit the wall, increasing the Hodunk's speed drastically) and slowly walked over to Athena. The former assassin couldn't look the mechanic in the eye, her heart pounded relentlessly and a painful lump formed in her throat.

"I'm sorry", she blurted out. Janey's steps came to a halt. "I'm so incredibly sorry. I should have called, I should have explained..."

"There's no need to explain." Janey's voice was soft and sorrowful. "Nothing to worry about. One of your friends already told me everything."

"One of... what?" Athena looked up in surprise, finally returning Janey's look.

"Thin guy, red scarf, black goatee, pet hawk? Does that ring any bells? Well, he came here some four weeks ago, wanted to know where you could be found and _inconveniently_ I had absolutely no idea. But we still had a little talk. So, we can skip all that and move on to the important question: Why did you come back?!"

The words struck home like missiles. "Mordecai... was here?!"

"Ah, don't worry, I sent him off to Aegrus for good measure. And he sure lost interest in me, once I had persuaded him there was nothing _serious_ going on between the two of us. Back to the topic: Why are you here?!"

This next volley was at the same time reassuring and devastating. Athena was relieved that Janey had skillfully dodged the bullet that was Mordecai and cringed at the stress put on "serious". Not to mention the tone of her voice, filled with fear and caution and hurt and something else Athena couldn't quite name. And it made answering the question so incredibly difficult. Her knees started to shake. That was a first.

"Listen, I wanted to return... as soon as I could..."

"What do you need? A car? Food? Medicine? Because you came back either because you need help or because you don't have to worry about those two Vault Hunters any more."

"It's the latter. We've... made an arrangement. And _of course_ I will always come back to you", she added quickly, letting it spill out. "I need _you_. Please. I didn't want any of this to happen. And a lot of shit happened in the last two weeks alone. I can't take anymore. Not on my own."

It was perfectly silent in the garage. Janey took a deep breath, relaxing slightly, but her voice quivered, when she spoke again: "Then why did you try in the first place? Bailing out like that. Why didn't you trust me on that matter? We came down here together, remember?"

"Yes... and it means more to me than anything else. But this was my fight and..."

"Athena. You don't have to fight anything on your own anymore. I was right there, I would have done everything to help you. Don't tell me you didn't know that. And don't you dare tell me you wanted to keep me safe, this _is_ Pandora and, ah, do you remember that huge, rock monstrosity we took on together? So please, why didn't you trust me? Why did you just run off, without even leaving a frigging note? And why the _hell_ didn't you bring up your two tails before?! Sasha and Vaughn remembered them pretty vividly, when I asked them."

"I was scared", Athena started to explain. Defending herself. But words had never been her weapon of choice and it was so hard to ignore the look of utter hurt in Janeys eyes. "Not of the marriage or anything, I was honestly scared of Brick and Mordecai. Please, you've got to believe me... They were the very first successful Vault Hunters, you've probably heard stories about them... The Slab King and the winner of Moxxi's Underdome... And under no circumstances did I want them to find you... or... let them find out... how much you mean to me..."

"Yeah, but: Why. Did. You. Never. Tell. Me?" Brown eyes full of anguish, staring her down.

It would have been easy, so easy, to just burst into tears right then and there, but Athena managed to go on. "I thought it was over... I thought they had finally lost my trail... Should have known better after Rhys of all people managed to track me down..."

"And are there any other things you haven't told me yet? For starters, you originally tried to swipe the Felix-Job under the rug, didn't you? Are there any more jobs you wouldn't want me to know about?!"

"No! I haven't done a bounty since Elpis! I want to live a peaceful life, I... Look, go to Scapelli, he keeps a track record of every run I ever did for him, go check... You already did, didn't you?"

Janey nodded, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. "So let me get this straight: After bandits and critters, Atlas, Dahl and Hyperion, after two goddamn Vault Monsters you were so scared of two men and a bird that you didn't even dare to tell me and opted to run away? That's it?"

Now it was Athena's turn to nod, silently.

There was an incredible long pause. "I... I just don't get it. I was right there. I would have done anything in my power to help you. We're engaged, remember? I know you, I know exactly why you reacted the way you did. But can I have a little trust? At least I?" Janey sounded helpless, disenchanted.

There was a sinking, horrible feeling in Athena's stomach and it was impossible to hold the tears back. "I trust you Janey. There's no one I ever trusted more. It's just... These guys were practically knocking on our door, I panicked, I went into autopilot... I failed you, plain and square."

When Janey spoke again, her voice was soft. "You didn't fail me. You came back, all limbs still attached and no blood on your clothes. And that's all that matters. I've been worried beyond belief..." And she made the last few steps and hugged Athena.

Feeling the warmth of the other woman pressing against her, the block of ice cold fear in Athena's chest melted in a heartbeat and started to flow out. She buried her face in Janey's shoulder, clumsily wrapping her arms around her and letting the tears of relief and shame fall freely. It took her a moment to realize Janey was crying as well.

"You have a strange way of conveying worry", Athena muttered, once the sobs had subsided a bit.

"And you have a _very_ strange way of conveying trust", Janey replied and lightly kissed the top of Athena's head.

For a moment they just stood there, holding each other close, reassuring each other.

Then of course a masked man walked into the garage, naked from the waist up, waving a bloody crowbar. "Oh looky here, two cuddling, weeping love-birdies! I wonder, will they lay eggs if we hit them hard enough? Well, the proof is in the pudding! Meat pudding! With eggs!" Upon which he attacked.

Athena withdrew from the embrace and sent Aspis flying in one smooth movement. The heavy shield hit the psycho under the chin, killing him on impact. He slumped to the ground, the crowbar clattered under a work bench. Athena caught her shield easily and turned back to Janey, but her girlfriend had retreated a bit and grinned.

"Time to close the shop, isn't it? Don't think we should risk anyone else seeing us like this", she said, her voice still a bit shaky, but she showed a teasing smile nonetheless. "Look at us. All tear stained. Not what they'd expect from Pandora's Great Gladiator..."

"...and Elpis' Greatest Kraggon-slayer", Athena finished and smiled, genuinely and gratefully. How, how could she ever have believed that Janey, sweet, kind, forgiving Janey, would turn her away? And still she felt the need to hold her and thank her over and over, with all her heart, for being there, for forgiving her so easily, for giving her life any kind of sense...

Janey gathered up her pistol as well as a remote for the shutters (and most probably the spring guns), slipped out of her vest with the Flying Skag Logo on the back, pushed some buttons on a control panel and the lights went out. "All good, let's go."

"What about the dead guy?"

"Organic waste disposal isn't due until Friday", Janey replied, shrugging, while they walked back out on the street. Behind them the shutters started to close.

"Thank you", Athena muttered, when they stroke for home. "For holding out for me."

Janey chuckled, before she leaned in close and kissed Athena on the cheek. "With pleasure, my dear lady. And thank _you_ for coming back unharmed." A brief pause, then: "But don't you ever run off like that again."

"Promise", Athena replied. That anger was justified and would probably linger a while, but it wasn't threatening to destroy anything. She reached down carefully and held Janeys hand, warm and calloused, her fingers giving a gentle squeeze.

Sure, there were Lilith and her Raiders, a mysterious Alien, oncoming war and Pandora in general. But right now Athena was just happy to exist and be home again. Home. Walking next to her girlfriend. Holding her hand. Knowing she would never turn her away. What else to wish for?


	3. Chapter 3: Captivity

Chapter 3: Captivity

Maya made her quick report on the machinery and just when she finished, there was a knock on the doorframe. A Raider stood there, his helmet tucked under the left arm, the right hand lifted to his temple in salute. There was a strange, blackened scar on the right side of his clean shaven head, remnants of an electrical burn he had sustained in a fight against an ION-Loader. "Lieutenant Jessup reporting in!", he announced loud and clear, before dropping his salute.

"Any emergencies?", Maya wondered innocently. Because that would have been her cue to take up guns and go deal with whatever emergency was out there.

"Nothing out of the ordinary, I'm afraid", the soldier answered with a sincere amount of compassion in his voice. "Now, daily update..." Jessup moved over to the holo-table. "Where shall we begin?"

"Hyperion", the sirens responded almost in unison.

"Fine. The Slabs are still upholding the siege on Control Core Angel and as long as it keeps them happy - let them. The guys down in the Core have water and supplies in abundance and they sure as hell won't move out of there in the near future. They don't even answer to ECHO-messages.

Apart from those, we picked up literally everyone. Not kidding, I double checked with the files from the Info Stockade. Every Hyperion employee left on this planet is accounted for."

"Where did you find the last ones?", Maya interrupted.

"Marks and Zimard came across them in the Nexus. Sheer luck. Which unfortunately doesn't relieve us from the obligation to pay every drink these two down next week."

"Was there a fight?", Lilith inquired.

"Well... not really..."

* * *

Arvid Johnson wiped his brow furiously, but the sweat kept pouring out of every pore on his head, making his buzz cut feel like a soaked, sweltering mattress some moron had strapped to his head. And he was already walking in the shadow! Sand crunched beneath his boots, Rakk screeched in the distance and the sun burned down in a way that somehow made it _audible_. At least he didn't have to wear the bulky, yellow protective clothing anymore, but even so his thin shirt and his canvas-pants were soaked.

"It'll be alright", Fred Porres muttered next to him. "It'll be aaaalright. We'll reach the highway, we'll reach the Blight, we'll reach home base, it's all going to be totally alright..."

"Oh, buck up", Johnson hissed. His colleague didn't react. He had his eyes closed and moved his hands in front of his chest in a delicate pattern, as if he was weaving something.

"He'll snap out of it", Sling predicted. The soldier held his sniper rifle low, the butt resting comfortably against his hip. "You'll see. He's just shell-shocked, that's all."

Johnson made a loud, disapproving noise. They hadn't seen any shells. They hadn't seen any combat at all. What they had seen was the world coming apart around them. A world of safety and supplies and regular paychecks.

The engineer peeked up at the Eridium-pipeline. Strong steel resting on concrete foundations. _That_ was his world. Pressure and viscosity, shear stress and velocity profiles. Predicting how the thick fluid would behave inside the pipeline, designing practical solutions for complicated problems, finding the right alloy to withstand Skag-spit.

And now he was trudging through the desert, together with his colleagues and the detachment of soldiers that had been with them at the pumping station. They had left just a day ago, following the pipeline through the Boneyard, back to the mining areas of the Eridium Blight. An electrical storm had destroyed the remaining loaders and their ECHO-communicators a week ago, so they didn't have the slightest idea if any other Hyperion force was left on this blasted planet. Johnson frankly didn't care. He desperately wanted to reach the nearest launching pad and leave for good.

Because a horrible, nagging thought was tormenting not only him but probably everyone in their little, miserable band: What if they _were_ the last? Surely Hyperion would do better than Dahl or Atlas, surely they wouldn't leave anyone behind on Pandora, surely there was some means of evacuation... but what if not? What then?

Pandora didn't have a regular spaceport. There were a number of Hyperion launch pads, though. After Helios Station had crashed, the company had sent freighters into deep orbit, in order to collect the rockets loaded with (and ironically, powered by) Eridium. One of those launch pads was their destination. It would be their way off Pandora.

Had to be.

Johnson bit his lip. Somewhere out there were the escape pods to this nightmarish planet. They would get out of here. _He_ would get out of here. He'd cash in his paychecks, return to Hephaestus, propose to Gemma and on some distant day they would simply laugh about the days when Hyperion had collapsed and he had been dragging through the sands of a Skag infested wasteland.

"Alright, stop!" Staff Sergeant Haynes who walked at the head of the band raised his fist. "Take a break everyone, one cup of water each, rest your feet, but don't any of you doze off, understood?"

"Yes, Sir!", the soldiers answered in perfect unison, while the engineers merely nodded and muttered something along the line of: "Thanks" or "About time."

Johnson sat down in the shadow of the pipeline, took a bottle of water from the storage-unit at his belt and unscrewed the lid which served as a cup. Sling shouldered his rifle and sat down beside him.

"Ever shot a gun?", he asked the engineer.

Johnson did not want to have this conversation and busied himself with the water.

"You know, it might come in handy. It might take some time, until we can leave here", the sniper continued.

"You're not helpful", Johnson snapped.

"I am. All of us want to get out of here, but we have to face the fact that 'as-fast-as-possible' could mean 'in-a-couple-of-weeks' in this case. And people don't live on Pandora. They survive. So, better get used to firing a weapon, before this planet literally kills your face."

"I understand that. I've usually don't think about it, but I understand what it means to be on frigging Pandora even without you explaining in unsubtle terms."

"This whole planet is rather unsubtle. The only thing even remotely subtle are the Stalkers with their camouflage. And you're not doing yourself a favor, if you don't think about this situation. Otherwise you end up like Porres."

Johnson gave his colleague a quick look, surprised to see Garrison, one of the bulky Infiltrators, squatting next to the heat stricken engineer, calmly talking to him.

"Well, you end up like the Porres of five minutes ago", Sling corrected himself. "Haynes told us we should prepare you individually for the grind ahead."

"You still don't know, if it's going to be a grind", Johnson replied stubbornly and with an increasing feeling of dread.

"Face the facts", Sling said softly. "That's what you lot do all day, isn't it? Your job is all about them. Facts. Handsome Jack is dead. Helios crashed. Hyperion didn't send a relief unit, not for us, not for _anyone_. The Info Stockade was shut off from outer space. The radios have been silent for days in a row. The only people calling were people on the ground, some of them rather desperate. Haynes spent a week trying to get permission from high command to leave the station and he didn't even get an answering machine. Now please join the dots."

Johnson drew a shaky breath and clenched his fists. For some reason his mind conjured up an image of Gemma, her green eyes sparkling with happiness, her broad smile heartwarming. And his heart felt as if it had been ripped out.

"Now, Hyperion may be gone for good, but there are still ways of this planet. There are smugglers. There are the Crimson Raiders, we know they've got off world connections. There is material left behind that we may fix. If any group can escape this cesspool, it will be the one consisting of highly trained engineers and battle hardened killers, am I right?"

Johnson fought back tears, as he did what the soldier had told him and stopped pretending. Of course they were abandoned. Why would Hyperion do something Dahl and Atlas hadn't done? After the crash of Helios, the company had merely extracted every ounce of Eridium they could, before everything went to shambles. For the vice presidents, superintendents and top managers it was all about profit. And evacuating a couple of thousand workmen and fighters from a notoriously dangerous planet was anything but profitable. Quite the opposite, because all of these people would demand their just payment and some might even get the idea to take the company to court for compensation.

Slowly, the engineer nodded.

"That's the spirit." Sling briefly placed a reassuring hand on Johnsons shoulder, before tucking a submachine gun out of his storage unit. "And you will keep this beauty at your side from now on, okay? Target practice starts whenever we spot the next Skag."

Johnson inspected the weapon closely, bewaring of the trigger, but on closer examination he figured out how to reload the gun and how the devices at the butt would dampen the recoil to the point, that the weapon would actually stabilize with continuous shooting. For practicing purpose he extracted and inserted the magazine a couple of times over, eventually trying to do it without looking. It was pretty easy, the computer did most of the work.

Looking around, Johnson saw that some of the other engineers had been handed weapons too, mostly SMGs and pistols, Old Barnes however had earned a sniper rifle, because, as everybody had been told times over and again, the man had been an excellent marksman back on Themis. Fred Porres and two other engineers had apparently been deemed unstable and were left unarmed.

Suddenly they had become a war party and the sight was incredibly reassuring. Desperate hope and stubborn denial had turned to grim determination. They would fight their way off this planet, for sure! Fuck Hyperion, and see you in court! Johnson couldn't force the grin from his face.

"Eyes left!", Haynes shouted suddenly.

Everyone jerked around. Two clouds of swirling dust had appeared on the horizon, quickly drawing closer.

"Oculars!", the Staff Sergeant demanded. "Take positions!"

The soldiers fanned out, forming a semicircular perimeter around the engineers with the foundation of the pipeline at their backs. On each flank two men with assault rifles had taken a knee, next in line were the Infiltrators, Garrison and Howler, who held shotguns and were saving the remaining energy in their cloaks for the attack, in the center four soldiers knelt in a protective wall in front of Haynes and Faulkner, the squad's Raptor, who had propped a rocket launcher up on his shoulder. Sling and Wick, the designated marksmen, had taken positions behind the Infiltrators and were the only ones left standing upright, apart from the Sergeant.

"Trucks incoming!", Haynes reported to his squad. "Machineguns and catapults. Switch to corrosive weapons."

"Can't you take them out already?", Barnes demanded, his voice dripping with nervousness.

"Shaddap, civilian", Garrison barked.

"Can anyone make out insignia?", Haynes asked, eyes glued to the binoculars.

"White Vault Symbol with Black Dagger on Red", Sling announced, peering down the optics of his sniper rifle. "Crimson Raiders. What are they doing up here?"

"Lay down your arms." Haynes voice was hard, serious and allowed no questions. "All of you! Hands behind your heads!"

"What's going on?!", Johnson whispered, incredulous, but no one listened, much less answered. Perres had started to shake once more. Why did the clan affiliation of the approaching bandits matter? They were savages, the lot of them! Bloodthirsty madmen who wouldn't accept surrender, who probably didn't even understand the concept of surrender anymore. This was an incredible gamble that would never pay off...

The trucks drew to a stop, weapons trained on the shaking Hyperion men. Rust, sand and probably the occasional firefight had taken their toll on the sturdy pickups, they were beaten and ugly, the front bumpers smeared with blood, the driver seats were merely protected by roll cages, the sides were laced with rusty spikes and saw blades, daring anyone to climb on board. The front passenger seats had been replaced with catapult turrets, ready to hurl explosive barrels at anything that proved to be hostile.

"I, Staff Sergeant Samuel Haynes, herewith surrender unconditionally to the forces of the paramilitary organization called Crimson Raiders. My men have thrown down their weapons, we are ready to go into captivity and of course we will submit to the compensation program, which by the way I know about in detail. My men, however, don't, so I would appreciate it if you would elaborate."

The driver of the left vehicle carefully climbed out of his seat, holding a submachine gun. He wore a grey coverall and pieces of red Atlas armor, including greaves, gloves and an integral helmet. "Well, well, well, fancy with words, aren't you, matey? Where from?"

"Pumping Station 5, thirty two clicks to the north."

"Where to?"

"We intended to reach one of the Hyperion launch pads."

"None left, matey, at least not in the functioning kind of way." The bandit chuckled and turned his head, counting under his breath. "Well, that's funny. You're literally the last batch of Hyperion out here on its own, did you know that?"

"We lost our ECHO communicators to an electrical storm some days back", Haynes replied, looking sternly into the distance, somehow still defying the Raider by not speaking to him directly.

"Fair enough. Alright guys, I'm not as fancy as your leader here concerning words, but I'm Private Marks of the Crimson Raiders, we're the winners of this war and your lot are its prisoners. As Hyperion sure isn't gonna pay for your release, we'll have to extract some kind of reparations from your sorry asses." The bandit started to pace in front of them, his comrade was still in his car, letting the turret turn a little left and right, just to make sure everyone was on the same level. "Now, you'll be put to work. A full, regular year of work and in my opinion that's about as cheap as it gets for you jerks. After that, you're free to go and we'll arrange a passage with the smugglers for you. However, these fine gentlemen prefer to get paid, so if you can't prove you can afford, it's another two months working down here. Deal?!"

"What kind of work would that be?!", Barnes shouted.

"Depends on your skills, really. You're engineers, right? Well, you'll be fixing up cars, constructing houses and salvaging bandit camps. Or you'll just mine Eridium."

"How are we supposed to prove that we can afford a passage?", Johnson asked slowly.

"Oh, for Terramorphus sake, couple of days without it and you've already forgotten about the brilliant invention called the ECHOnet? Don't you worry, once you've done your duty, you may call home, have you're people pay them smugglers and start filing the lawsuits. I'd really _hate_ to see each of you get less than ten million compensation from Hyperion for what you've been through."

No one spoke, everyone had to process this new Situation.

Barnes was the first one to speak up: "Hold it, Haynes, you knew about all this?! And why the fuck didn't you..."

"I wanted to try", the Sergeant replied, calm and even. "One year of hard labor is still one year of hard labor and I wanted to skirt it if possible. The Crimson Raiders broadcasted a call for everyone of us shortly after Helios crashed: lay down your arms, do your reparations work and so forth. I heard how other prisoners were treated, but, well, I still wanted to try another way off this rock."

"And you're lucky there is one nowadays", Marks added, casually starting to pick up the discarded weapons. "When Atlas hauled ass, there weren't even smugglers. We were literally stuck on the ground and being abandoned is not a good feeling, isn't it, mateys? So you guys are enormously lucky, for one, that high command offers you a sure way out and then again that you're actually useful alive and we ain't just gonna shoot you like rabid Skags for all the crap you pulled on us. And now, would you kindly climb on board?"

Johnson slowly started to move, still struggling to understand their humongous luck. He hardly knew any of the bandit factions, but he'd never guessed that anyone of them could be so reasonable. Okay, one more year on Pandora was pretty bad in itself, more so because this time it would go completely unpaid, but at least it meant relative safety and most importantly a sure way out of here.

Marks herded them onto the trucks, while speaking into his ECHO: "Guess what, we've got the last Hyperion guys! And you know what that means? We're owed a week of free drinks, if I remember correctly. Hell yeah! Anyhow, we're gonna hand them over to Waffles and his gang up at Hero's Pass. They can start straight away with cleanup."

The cargo area of the pickup got a little crowded with fifteen men, but it would do. Johnson found himself with the back to the turret and he was very careful not to raise his head to high. He had no desire to touch the explosive barrel loaded into the catapult.

"So", Johnson started, addressing Sling who huddled down beside him, "those Crimson Raiders... who the fuck are they?"

The sniper made a face. "Oh, Marks already explained. They fought Hyperion, Hyperion withdrew and now apparently they run the show. Lots of former Atlas soldiers, adventurers and Vault Hunters. True and tested Vault Hunters!"

"And are they... trustworthy?"

"Apparently. They actually accepted surrender after the battle at Hero's Pass and Haynes wouldn't have done this, if he hadn't been sure they would treat us... not too bad. I was about to say good, but screw that. It's still one year of forced labor. But after that..." Sling didn't finish the sentence, he just gave a relieved sigh.

They would be going home. The thought hit home like a sledgehammer. The Raiders wouldn't kill them, as long as they complied, and Johnson intended to do so. The sudden certanity of his eventual departure made him dizzy: He _would_ leave Pandora and once he returned to the core worlds, he would hire a lawyer, any lawyer, in a case like this it didn't really matter, and sue the living shit out of Hyperion. And his colleagues would do the same, he was sure of that.

Speaking of stick and carrot.

"Gemma, I'll come home", Johnson whispered, as the truck jerked into gear and roared back to wherever a handful of engineers and unarmed soldiers could be put to good use.


	4. Chapter 4: Hunters

Chapter 4: Hunters

"That's good news", Lilith said. "What about the Hyperion forces we already captured?"

"Oh, they comply as well. They know we're their only chance to get off the planet and they sure as hell don't want to spoil that. So, yep, they'll stay in line until we lose our off-world connections."

Maya smiled, knowing that this was fairly unlikely. For the time being, they were the only source for Eridium, as no one was eager to launch another colonization of the Borderlands, not after what had happened to Hyperion.

"Now, next topic: Vault Hunters. All quiet on all the fronts. Of course there are a lot of cocky mercenaries and adventurers out there who answered the call, but until now all those who caught our attention were, ahem, rejected." Jessup made a point of not looking at Lilith. She had personally evaluated every person who had jumped to the latest recruitment drive and not a single one had been deemed worthy. However, Maya understood her fellow siren perfectly. It took more than a reckless attitude and the ability to fire any imaginable kind of weapon to make a good Vault Hunter.

"Fine, so what's the status of the known Hunters still out there?", Lilith asked, sounding pretty annoyed.

"Well, Maya, Krieg, Zero and Salvador have already returned from their various Vault Hunts outside of the system...", Jessup said, before Maya chimed in: "Yeah, thank you very much, we know _that_ , so pretty please, what's the news from Axton and Gaige?" She couldn't help but wonder, if Jessup had perhaps spent too much time with the military for his own good.

The Lieutenant cleared his throat and was back on track. "These two have left Epitah today. They're using a spacecraft of their own, which is admittedly kind of strange, I mean, who just happens to find a spacecraft?, but anyhow, they'll be here in a couple of days and they've accomplished their goal on the planet."

"They found the Vault?!" Maya's head jerked up in surprise.

"No, the other goal."

* * *

Judging by the textbook definition of a "border-world", Epitah was not one of them. It had three commercial spaceports, a legally verified committee with the power to represent the whole world in interplanetary matters and the distance to the next inhabited planet was less than three Parsec. Damn, they even had a thorough introductive quarantine.

Still, it was not the kind of place Axton would have chosen for a honeymoon.

The atmosphere, although breathable, held free hydrogen chloride gas which reacted with any open water available. The natives were accustomed to this inconvenience, but the Commando had to inhale a neutralizing agent four times a day to keep his lungs from filling with acid and even tap water needed to be meticulously filtered before a nonlocal could drink it.

The temperature change between day and night was brutal. As long as the sun was up, the thermometer would rise to more than 325 Kelvin and drop to 290 during the night. This change on a daily basis was sufficient to wear down stone and the mountains on this planet (or at least, those Axton had seen until now) all looked like they were covered in some rocky kind of scurf.

And the Lungers, local cat-like, green creatures with six legs and acidic spittle, had the nasty habit of eating people's noses. Nothing else. Just the noses.

Not that any of that mattered. After all, they were Vault Hunters and since no one on this planet had tried to shoot them yet and the shops accepted the intergalactic Dollar, there was absolutely no reason to complain.

Since their arrival, lady luck had been smiling down on them. Actually since the moment in the shuttle where Gaige had hacked into immigration authority to assure their false identities would go unnoticed. While in the system, she had learned of two special people on the planet: One of them was a xeno-archeologist, who had come to Epitah solely for "researching the Eridian Ruins on this planet and hopefully extracting enough knowledge to put that annoying bitch Tannis back in her place!" At least that was what his immigration form read in the box with the headline "Reason for the stay on this planet."

The other interesting person was a sickeningly wealthy aristocrat, a baroness who apparently owned a whole planet. She had managed with one word, where the scientist had broken into unnecessary drabble: "Hunt." And she was blissfully unaware that two battle-tested and scuffproof killers were about to turn the tables on her, because not only one but two close friends of said killers offered proper bounties for this baroness.

Gaige had left a cake in the spaceport's system (Axton insisted that a tracking cookie remained a tracking cookie, no matter the genius of its inventor or the size of the computer it surveyed, but said inventor didn't care the least for his objections), so they would know in time, if Baroness Aurelia Hammerlock was about to leave the planet. After attaching this safety line and with the Vault being their primary concern, the two had tracked down the archaeologist in the city of Grassborough.

Axton had lowered his standards severely after spending almost a year on Pandora, but he would still refrain from calling the archaeologist normal. It had taken quite some talking before the man had even allowed them inside his crammed little house and by the time the paranoiac was willing to share any of his findings with the Vault Hunters, Gaige claimed to have gotten grey and Axton had a nasty cramp from preventing his right hand from drawing a pistol and simply threaten the hell out of the scientist. Eventually they had learned about some extensive Eridian Ruins in the wilderness.

Gaige had been eager to leave the city straight away, but Axton had talked her out of it, in order to enjoy at least one day of normality. This day off had been amazingly refreshing. They had had clean hotel rooms with unlimited hot water, the Food had been marvelous and the ECHO newscast didn't feature a single murder on the front page. Gaige had searched the relevant shops for useful parts for Deathtrap and had stocked up on cocoa, while Axton had spend the day mostly in a sports bar, catching up on the last legs of the Anshin-Galaxy-Race and discussing with other patrons whether Team Harrier still stood a chance after colliding with an asteroid.

The next day they had rented a sturdy off-road vehicle, stocked up on any kind of supplies they would need and left for the savannah that surrounded the city and its assorted farmlands. They had reached and investigated the ruins, shot the occasional wildlife (mostly Lungers and Stripped Lizards, but on one occasion Gaige claimed Sir Hammerlock would be highly interested in a gazelle-like creature with a turtle-like carapace on its back) and by pure coincidence they had discovered a transportable hunting lodge in the savannah, belonging to a certain baroness. As the two Vault Hunters had been out on foot, no one in the lodge had spotted them, which made things almost too easy. From the cover of a rocky outcropping Axton had readied a long range sniper rifle, put the head of Lady Hammerlock neatly in the crosshairs and then of course Gaige had interrupted him with an important message from Lilith, which made the job a hell of a lot more difficult.

Don't kill Aurelia. Bring her to Pandora. Why did things never work out the easy way?

The pair of Vault Hunters had sneaked back to their truck and parked it several miles away from the lodge on a hill where thick boulders and scrawny trees provided ample cover. Night had fallen and Axton was wrapped in a thick coat of Bullymong-fur, carefully observing the lodge from the vantage point of the vehicles roof. His turret was out beside him, softly humming and clicking when it turned on its tripod, scanning tirelessly for enemies in the tall grass and between the rocks.

"I'm bored!", Gaige stated from the drivers cabin. "Booored. What's wrong with going in there guns a-blazing?"

"First I'd like to know what we're in for", Axton replied calmly, readjusting his binoculars. "Remember, she was a Vault Hunter herself in her time."

"What Vault would she have been hunting, if I may ask?"

"How am I supposed to know? Lilith just said she has been _and_ that she has been successful."

"And Sir Hammerlock said this lady is nothing short of a pain in the arse."

"Yeah, siblings have a tendency to leap to those conclusions", Axton muttered, remembering his cousins and their constant bickering.

For a moment there was blissful silence. Over at the well-lit lodge, Aurelia appeared wearing a long, flowing, fur-rimmed gown of blue silk, heading for a table in the open where dinner had been prepared for her, complete with small thermostats to keep the food from freezing in the cold night. The baroness looked ridiculously out of place, with perfect headdress, manicured fingernails and jewelry around her neck.

"Hey, Axton! Look!"

The Commando turned around and it took his eyes a while to readjust to the darkness, before he recognized a thin, round object just in front of him. Somehow, Gaige had demounted the truck's wheel and now she held it high out of the open sunroof with her mechanical hand, waving it enthusiastically. "Witness me!", she shouted, laughing madly.

Axton couldn't help but smile. "Witness!"

Gaige withdrew the wheel and made the sound of a huge explosion.

"Mediocre, Gaige, mediocre! And we're definitely nerds for knowing a three-thousand year old film that hasn't even been converted to holograms."

"Oh, don't worry, you're not a nerd. You just fit into the time it was published."

Axton paused. "Okay, little lady, I'm going to forget about this, but only because I know below all the guns and genius you're still a teenager and therefore the age of twenty six seems unreachable to you."

"Don't call me little lady", Gaige answered happily.

"How 'bout jailbait?", Axton suggested.

"I'm going to forget about this", the mechromancer began in a very bad imitation of Axtons voice, "but only because I know you were amazingly fast to pass out the day I celebrated my _nineteenth_ birthday back in Sanctuary. And you know what? Here on Epitah you come of age once you turn seventeen. So, it would be totally legal for you to start flirting away."

"That's an invitation?"

"That's a dumb question on your part, because you're not going to take it in any case."

"Well, that's where you're right, sis", Axton sighed and concentrated on the lodge once again. How much stuff had Aurelia taken to the wilderness?! And how much staff, come to that? Up to now he had counted four menservants, two cooks, two drivers, an electrician, an armorer, a frigging coiffeur and a local guide. No bodyguards though.

"Why do we actually have to listen to Lilith?", Gaige continued down in the drivers cabin. "I'd support Hammerlock's plan, pop a cap in her ass and call it a day."

"No surprises there", Axton grumbled.

"Me wanting to shoot someone?"

"You siding with Hammerlock."

"Cyborgs gotta stick together."

Down in the valley Aurelia had taken a seat and was now calmly spooning soup from a fine porcelain bowl, while reading something on her ECHO device. The drivers were occupied with one of the two caravans that were parked beside a small jeep and a quad bike (this lady truly came prepared), but everyone else had retreated to the warmth of the lodge. Apparently, none of these jokers had ever weathered the Southern Shelf on Pandora.

"I could go down there, set fire to one of the caravans and while everyone is busy we could shock and shackle Miss Important", Gaige offered. "We've already established that we're good at setting trailers ablaze in the middle..."

A Stripped Lizard the size of a small Skag came running out of the tall grass and leapt at the baroness. Without looking, she pointed her right hand at the attacking animal and let fly... something, from a blue device mounted on her wrist. The lizard found itself literally frozen in place. A thin layer of ice coated the animal and formed a pillar that connected it to the ground and kept it from falling over. Aurelia had never even lifted her gaze from the ECHO.

Axton lowered his binoculars. "Wow. You see that?"

"I've got a mechanical arm, not a mechanical eye. How am I supposed to see anything down there without some kind of field glasses?"

"Well, Lady Hammerlock just froze a lizard in place. Literally. Some peace of cryo-tech." Carefully Axton climbed down through the sunroof, only to find Gaige sprawled across the two front seats.

"Don't you step on me", the girl grinned up at him. "And close the roof, it's starting to get cold in here."

Axton placed one foot on the dashboard, the other on a headrest and slammed the sunroof shut. "Have you been listening?"

"Yeah, the lady is a stone cold bitch, so what? Cryo only works under certain atmospheric circumstances. We just chill till daybreak and her weapon won't be half as cool."

"All in all a nice summary of my thoughts on the matter. And I might just have seen these puns coming." Still avoiding to step on his fellow Vault Hunter, Axton climbed through the hatch into the aft section of the truck. Two bunks were mounted on the left wall, a little separated bathroom could be found at their feet. The opposite wall held a small kitchen area, the main computer terminal and an airtight door. Dim red lights had been put up, in order to illuminate the truck without messing up their night vision. The Commando stowed his coat in a storage digistruct-unit, pulled off his boots and crawled into the lower bunk.

"Already going to sleep?" Gaige's head poked through the hatch, looking vaguely creepy in the red light. "You're really getting old, aren't you?"

"Spend a couple of weeks in a trench, with mortars going off all around you, your comrades freaking out and tanks rolling up to your position day and night, and THEN you tell me to pass on an opportunity to get a good night's rest." Without leaving the bunk, Axton stripped out of his flak vest, unclipped his shield from his belt and removed the two storage units from his pockets. Now it was much easier to find a comfortable sleeping position.

Gaige had eyed him closely. "And how do you explain your unconcern? Putting down literally all of your weapons for the night?"

The soldier sighed and propped his head up. "Do you ever long for a normal life?"

"Define normal."

"Peaceful. No need to have a weapon at hand all the time. People on the street greeting you, not trying to eat your feet. A warm place to call home. A wife... or in your case a husband to spend the evening with, maybe at a fine diner, maybe at the holodome..."

"And now, just to top it off, you're growing soft as a pile of Stalker-goo."

"No, I'm serious. Remember the day in Greenborough? How did that feel like?"

Hesitantly, Gaige climbed through the hatch, closing it behind her. "Like a vacation. I mean... like a real one, not something that ends with the dismemberment of an enormous crab worm."

Axton nodded. "Exactly. Life is not all blood and bullets and from time to time I like to remind myself of that. If there's a chance for me to let my guard down unpunished, that's what I'll do. If you're constantly on edge, you're going to fall over that edge someday. And once you do that, you go all out insane or you simply lose the ability to relax."

"You're talking about PTSD?" Gaige sounded a bit anxious.

"Yeah, sort of, but more like... constant vigilance. Paranoia. I've seen guys who couldn't unwind in their own houses, who tackled people that dropped a spoon in the cafeteria. And although this mindset is very useful in a warzone, I just like to be able to slip out of it. You know me, I love myself a good explosion and a sexy gun as much as any other merc out there. Odds are, I will become KIA, before I ever consider retirement. But, well, life is more than that. When I worked for Dahl, I had leave, I had a little apartment, I had Sarah. I used to visit my parents, help Dad in the gardens and ignore Mum inquiring about grandchildren. My buddies and I would pack beer, a barbecue grill, loads of steaks and then we'd go to the local park, settle down near the lake, hide the signs that read 'no swimming allowed' and chat about spaceships and the big races until the sun came back out..." Axton became suddenly aware that Gaige was still listening attentively. "Yeah, well, I missed all that on Pandora. Nowhere to feel really safe, so I reserve the right to enjoy a little comfort on this rather harmless planet."

He turned in his bunk to face the metal wall of the truck, cursing silently. He usually kept these memories to himself, all the good things in his rough soldier's life. As much as he hungered for the thrill of combat, for the high of killing and surviving incredible odds, he privately cherished the good old days, where there had been time to truly relax between missions. Talking about this life, especially in front of ever-witty Gaige, somehow ridiculed these little snippets of peace.

"You know, I never took you for a philosophic."

Ka-Zing. As could have been expected. "Go to bed, hug your shotgun and be content that you're always alert and ready for a fight." The moment he said it, Axton felt the answer to be a bit harsh, but on one hand he wanted to sleep and on the other hand he would not take any attacks on his private life.

"Sorry." Gaige sounded really apologetic. "I didn't mean that as a negative. It's just... you've made me think."

Axton sighed deeply, before turning yet again to see Gaige sitting cross legged on the floor, absentmindedly fiddling with her cybernetic limb. "Okay. What's on your mind?"

The mechromancer smiled at him sadly. "Peaceful times. My parents, my dad in particular, punk concerts, sunny days in the workshop... I haven't really thought about any of this since I arrived on Pandora. I figured it would hurt to remember, 'cause, well, no going back and all. But instead it's... it's..." For the first time Axton could remember, Gaige was out of words.

"Soothing?", he proposed. "Soothing to know something like that exists out there?"

Gaige looked up at him, smiling, then laughing. "That doesn't quite hit it, but it's close enough."

"Seeing that _you_ rarely hit anything you're aiming at, I declare the matter settled", Axton said and ignored the punch against his shoulder. "Now, go to bed and for once not put a pistol under the pillow, agreed? Let's make hay as long as the sun is out and relax a bit."

Outside a splintering crash could be heard and the comforting sounds of the Sabre-unit on the roof came to an abrupt end.

* * *

"That's life to you: You talk about peace, this is what you get", Axton growled, while rolling out of his bunk and donning his gear in a heartbeat. Gaige had already pulled out her shotgun, carefully training it on the door. If anyone came through there, not even the mechromancer would have been able to miss.

A repeating, whirring sound emanated from the roof, before the turret fell completely silent. In any other circumstance Axton would have bet on some kind of EMP to take his missus out, but this time a certain someone with a cryo-weapon was around...

Someone knocked on the door, politely though resolute.

Alright, no immediate hostilities. Good sign. Odds were high, that whoever was outside dreaded the inevitable paperwork that would follow the shooting of what could turn out to be harmless tourists on this calm and civilized planet.

"Just a second, gotta seal the water tank", Axton shouted. It was a reasonable excuse. In quarantine they had been told never to expose great bodies of water too long to the atmosphere, as it would unavoidably solubilize hydrogen chlorine from the air, becoming acidic.

"Well, make haste!", an indignant woman's voice answered from outside.

Axton jumped over to the computer terminal and turned the heating to maximum. The effects were immediate, as dry, hot air billowed from the vents.

"A little trap for the ice queen", Gaige noted and grinned.

"That's right, now hide the shotgun." Carefully Axton opened the door.

He blinked into the light of some rather powerful flashlights and was immediately peppered by questions: "Well then, who are you, what do you do here and why do you keep a military state-of-the-art turret on your roof?"

His eyes adjusted to the light and Axton saw Aurelia Hammerlock standing in front of him, hands on her hips, a high power hunting rifle slung over her shoulder. She looked annoyed, as if all this was way beneath her, and simoultaneously dangerous, like a snake waiting for the opportune moment to pounce. Or simply for the moment when her prey didn't provide any more entertainment. Behind her, Axton could vaguely distinguish the jeep, one of the drivers and the local scout, both of them looking rather apologetic. Each had a pistol holstered.

"Excuse me, did you win your manners in a drag race?!" Gaige pushed Axton to the side, in order to deal with Aurelia personally. "You come here in the middle of the night, you disable our highly expensive spring gun and then you start questioning us like we were just taken into custody?!"

"Oh, allow me to introduce myself." Aurelia dropped a little curtsy, her eyes never leaving the Vault Hunters. "I am Baroness Lady Aurelia Hammerlock, legal owner of the planet Hermes. These guys back there", she pointed casually in the direction of her servants, "are just two of my... minions." Both men nodded and waved nervously. Axton fought the mad urge to burst into laughter, remembering Claptrap and his liberal use of the term 'minions'.

"And now, tell me what exactly you are doing here, little girl." Aurelias gaze narrowed dangerously.

"Wow, what an honor!" Gaige offered a mock curtsy herself. "An aristocrat on our front lawn! And still you seem unable to address me properly..."

While she was speaking, Axton ushered her out of the truck, following closely and slamming the door shut behind him. All part of the hastily assembled plan. He gave his turret a quick look; it was coated in a thick layer of ice. Okay, that shouldn't cause permanent damage...

"Little girl, my patience is running quite thin." Abruptly, Aurelia's focus shifted to Axton, but she didn't leave Gaige out of her gaze. "Now, sir, perhaps you are a little more understanding."

The Commando shrugged. "Just out here on a safari. Epitah is quite famous for its diverse and interesting wildlife." He cursed himself for being so easily surprised. Probably he'd jinxed it by bringing up the topic of peacefulness in a mercenary's life. But he wouldn't need much to get back on top. He just needed this incredibly nosy and mistrustful woman to turn away from him for a split second. Yeah. Easy.

"You're working for Dahl?", Aurelia continued, inspecting Axton's army fatigue and the rank tattoo on his brow.

A trap, but a fairly easy one to dodge. "Talking about the uniform, right? Well, you got me, I never served in their forces, tried, but they discharged me as unfit. So when this crazy street vendor on Cerberus was selling these..."

"Yes, yes." Aurelia made a dismissive movement with her right hand. "And apparently he sold you a Sabre-turret as well? Functioning and modified?"

"I did all the modifications", Gaige chimed in. "All the good stuff, the rocket pods, magnetic lock, phalanx shield..."

"Shut your mouth, child, while the grown-ups talk", Aurelia berated the mechromancer in a tone of voice that should never ever be used on her. Axton knew. From dear experience.

"Excuse me, I am nineteen years old which makes me of age on ninety one percent of the inhabited planets. And if I'm including the border-worlds that don't have a strict regulation on that matter, we're up at ninety five percent. So don't call me a child!"

"Can you perhaps silence her?", the baroness asked Axton.

"I can try, but it won't work."

"Hellooo, I'm standing right here and as a matter of fact you've come to our place, so I don't see any reason to shut up, just because you're rich."

"So you need a reason? Well, I'd hate to see anything happen to your pretty face, but I'm sure I can give you some reason..."

"Ah, but this is Epitah, not Hermes! You can't threaten me here, you've no police force or military to back you up, we're all just tourists here!" Gaige smiled ridiculously. Axton had been on the receiving end of this smile often enough to know about its ability to heighten blood pressure.

"In fact, I can", Aurelia said, as cold as could be expected. "You know, it's not all about the money, darling. Power doesn't reside solely in a bank vault. There are other reasons why people dance, when I tell them to." The two guys behind her quickly started to tap-dance. "Truth be told, sometimes it's way too effective so _cut it out and stand still you idiots!_ "

It was then that Axton decided to spring into action, as Aurelia was sufficiently distracted . "Open door", he called and the truck's computer complied. A wave of overheated air burst from the truck and the gust held enough force to throw Gaige to the ground and make Aurelia stagger backwards. Axton pounced on the baroness, tackling her to the ground.

"What the...?!", Aurelia screamed and pointed her cryo-device at Axton. An ice spike hit the Commando in the chest, he felt the impact and for a split second a horrible cold crept over his torso, but the air was way too hot for the ice to sustain. Just a bit wet, Axton pinned the wrist with the ice shooter to the ground, whereupon Aurelia bitch-slapped him.

Seriously?

"Oh, you wanted to know what we're up to?!", Gaige shouted at the top of her lungs, scrambling back to her feet, spitting grass and dirt. "We're here to kidnap you, bitch! To tie you into a nice little bundle and deliver you to Planet Hell! And has anyone ever told you that monarchy and the likes are completely outdated? Fuck aristocracy! Raze it to the ground!"

"Umph, help, you dimwitted sons of slugs!", Aurelia spat, still wrestling with Axton. Former Vault Huntress or not, Axton was genuinely surprised that the woman could hold her own against him. From the corner of his eye he saw the two minions reluctantly drawing their weapons.

"Ah, I wouldn't do that, if I were you!", Gaige chirped, raising her mechanical hand in a stopping gesture. "Or do you really want to deal with _me_?!"

The men hesitated, looking at their employer who was rolling in the grass. The cryo-device had gone off two times by now, leaving rapidly melting icicles on the side of the truck, but Axton had the weapon firmly pointed away from himself and Gaige. "Get her! She's a little girl for fucks sake!" The baroness' voice sounded hysteric and shrill. Thankfully the glass in the truck's windows was reinforced, otherwise it might have broken then and there.

"Little girl? Little girl?! I am a woman of science and ass-kickery, lady!"

Axton was a bit preoccupied with his own fight, but he heard the distinctive sound of Deathtrap materializing, a deep robotic voice rumbling words only Gaige could understand and the high pitched screaming of Aurelia's henchmen, as they dropped their weapons and ran.

"Aw, that was fun", Gaige cooed.

"Little help here!", Axton shouted. He held on to Aurelia's cryo-weapon with a death-grip, and tried to pin her down in order to draw a gun, but she clawed and kicked and slapped and wriggled. It was like grappling with a well greased Thresher. A Thresher, come to that, who tried to draw a weapon himself.

"Sure thing, soldier boy. Roll to the side!"

Axton trusted his fellow Vault Hunter blindly, but he still held on to the cryo-weapon, when he flung himself to the side. Aurelia's free hand immediately reached for the storage unit at her hip to produce a gun, but Deathtrap was way faster. The baroness found herself in the literal iron grip of a sturdy, six-foot killer robot, unable to move her arms, let alone stand up. Axton quickly removed the cryo-weapon from Aurelia's wrist and heaved a sigh of relief.

"Mind if I take this?" Gaige strolled over and picked the device up. Blades of grass stuck to her face, but she grinned madly. "Jeez, this could be _very_ useful."

"Whatever you're being paid", Aurelia announced, "I can pay you tenfold. Hundredfold."

"Sorry, but we're not in this for the money", Axton explained. Quickly he bent down to remove the storage units and the hunting rifle Aurelia had on her person. "You remember Lilith?"

"The red witch from Elpis. Seriously? That was more than five years ago, and as far as I know she was killed on Pandora."

"Hate to break the news, but she's very alive and very thriving and she has an enormous chip on her shoulder", Gaige explained. She had already removed the casing of the cryo-weapon and carefully pushed a screwdriver into the interior. "Wants a little chat with you."

Axton scurried back into the truck. His first task was to set the heater back to normal, then he rummaged through the storage units mounted on the wall and eventually found a strong rope. He returned outside, just as Deathtrap gave a purring sound and disappeared in a cloud of glittering polygons. Gaige already had a pistol out, pointing it at the unarmed baroness, who was still lying on the ground. Axton lifted her up roughly and tied her hands behind her back.

"Oh, really? I'm way too rich to be treated like that. You have no idea what you're getting yourself in to! Trust me, you've never dealt with anyone remotely like me", Aurelia snarled.

"Ever heard of Handsome Jack? All rich, all powerful, all big words? Well, we kicked that sucker in the groin", Gaige said. This comment shut the baroness up efficiently.

"I'll sleep in the driver's cabin", Axton declared, while pushing the baroness into the truck. "Our guest will have my bunk. Could you please drop your new freezing toy for a sec and ECHO those clowns at the lodge, before they call authorities or, heaven forbid, mount an attack?"

"What shall I tell them?"

"Just tell them to stay put for another two weeks, unless they want another run-in with Deathtrap. Should keep them in check. And can you find out about the next possible flight off this rock?"

"Don't have to. Pass me her civilian SDU, please."

Shrugging, the Commando complied, tossing the device over. The truck's interior was still sweltering, although the thermostat did all it could to supply more moderate temperatures. As a neat side effect, the heat had melted the ice holding the Sabre-turret and while Axton shoved Aurelia into the bunk, he heard the reassuring humming and clicking from the roof yet again. Still, he would check his beauty in due time, make sure everything...

"Jackpot!", Gaige cried out.

Axton just took enough time to tie Aurelia to the cot, before hurrying outside again. The mention of Handsome Jack (and their part in his demise) had apparently shocked the baroness to the point where she just lay still, unresisting.

"What's the fuss about?", he asked Gaige, who simply waved with a key-card from Aurelia's storage unit."Know what that is? Well, our little Miss Aristocratic is definitely too important even for first class, so she came down to this planet with her very own spaceship. And guess who's got the key?" Gaige held the card out on her metallic palm. A little sensor was projecting a hologram of a sleek, wedge-shaped spacecraft. Just by the looks, Axton could identify it: A modified version of the Corazza Stinger-N347. Fast, comfortable and, best of all, a single person was able to pilot it.

"This is great", Axton whispered. "Can you fly it?"

Gaige's expression faltered. "Ah, nope, 'fraid not. So we need..."

"I've got it", the Commando said. "I'm actually legally cleared to pilot any SP20*-spaceship. Courtesy of Dahl. They wanted all their men to be able to fly a passenger craft, in case we needed to get out of a really tight spot."

"Righty-o", Gaige muttered. "Now, as our mission is technically over and we're free to leave whenever we want... why don't we add a couple of peaceful days? Wouldn't hurt, don't you think?"

Axton snatched the key-card from her hand and pocketed it. "We're not done yet. Remember the guys in the valley?"

The mechromancer rolled her eyes, took out her ECHO, activated the holographic screen and shoved some icons around. "Hey there, folks at the lodge! New rules for the upcoming two weeks: stay in camp and don't even touch the radio! We've got the baroness, we mean business and if you don't comply we'll send a spanking hot deadly DT-robot over to your camp to gut the lot of you like fish!" Axton stood close by and heard muffled voices from the receiver: _This sounds like a little girl. What the hell...? - Don't call her that! DO NOT call her that. - We'll stay put, ma'am. Everything will be exactly as you wish._ Apparently the two minions were already back at the lodge.

Gaige broke off the connection and glared up at Axton. "Happy now?

"Perfectly happy. Now, let's talk peaceful days, shall we? We've got a lot of Hyperion blood-money and no need to buy ammunition, so where shall we start? I suggest to go for a swim, as long as they've got a pool in Grassborough that doesn't eat through skin and muscles."

"And I'd really like to know, if _Systemcrash_ has released any new album in the past months", Gaige continued. "Or if there are any good holo-shows on at the moment... I can't even remember the last time I went to the holos."

"Time to refresh your memory. And why not risk a little call home, hm? Use a local ECHO-terminal straight before we get clearance to leave and good luck to any policeman and bounty hunter tracking the call", Axton replied, smiling.

"You _are_ growing soft", Gaige stated, before returning the smile and holding her metal hand up for a high-five. Axton obeyed and although the mechromancer used the full force of her cybernetic limb, just because she could, of course, his smile never faltered, while he checked his hand for broken bones.

"You're both mental!", Aurelia shouted from the truck, sounding completely unbelieving.

"No, lady", Gaige replied smoothly. "We're just Vault Hunters."

* * *

* SP20 = Single Pilot, Passengers Only


	5. Chapter 5: Destruction

Chapter 5: Destruction

"I'm getting suspicious here", Lilith said, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "Prosperity all around? Come on, Jessup, what's bad enough that you have to sugarcoat it with that many good news? This _is_ Pandora, things tend to go wrong."

The soldier scratched his bald scalp. "Sorry to disappoint, ma'am, but apart from the usual wildlife attacks, nothing awful has happened to any of our men or any of our facilities. We didn't lose as much as a limb in the past two days. Maybe these aliens are really watching out for us..."

"Doubtful", Lilith replied bitterly and passed a glance to one of the posters on the wall, showing Roland in all his strength and confidence.

"Well, if you're in the mood of not-so-good news." Jessup cleared his throat. "Old Haven has been all but nuked."

Maya stared at the Lieutenant, then passed a quick glance at Lilith, who looked equally flabbergasted. "Could you repeat that, please?"

"The whole city has fallen victim to some very violent explosions." There was something odd about the stress put on 'explosions'. "Nothing nuclear, though, that was just the idiom... Well, apparently the blasters used some Slag infused bombs, a modern version of salting the ground."

"Who the hell would do that?", Lilith stammered. "And why? I mean, the city is abandoned. No one left there, I took personal care of that matter."

Jessup cleared his throat yet again. Maya was tempted to offer him a lozenge. "We already know the culprits, ma'am, and they've already given us their reasons."

"That's impressive", Maya said, encouragingly, but Jessup just made a face. "Ah, it's not as if we caught them or something like that. They... they broadcasted the whole thing on the ECHOnet."

* * *

"Cut it!", Private Spinski screamed and tossed a glass at the new holo-screen. It passed through the hologram of a happy, guitar-playing Country-singer and crashed against the wall.

"What, you don't like Country music anymore?", Jessup said with a grin. Agreed, he wasn't the biggest fan of this singer himself, but that wouldn't stop him from teasing Spinski. In his private opinion, Country had been past ist peak since the death of Johnny Cash three thousand and oddball years ago. Impressive how some things simply didn't get better over millennia.

"Country music is a sin against humankind", the young Private announced. "Hey, Cindy, mind changing the goddamn channel or what?!"

"Customer's always right, sugar", the waitress replied and waggled over to the holo-device.

"Hun, I know you're doing your best, but please leave the sugars to Moxxi", Jessup sighed. "No criticism, really, it just.. doesn't sound right."

"Only trying to uphold the standards", Cindy smiled back. Since Mad Moxxi had relocated to her Underdome 2.0 in the Badass Crater of Badassitude, Cindy had taken charge of the bar in Sanctuary and for the most part, she did a great job. Especially concerning cleavage.

The Country singer vanished and was replaced by a man advertising the wonderful world of Aquator. Vast blue ocean and floating homesteads were shown in the background, lavish cruise ships plowed through azure waves... well, on the holograms everything looked slightly azure.

"And that's preferable to Country?", Jessup picked up again at teasing his comrade. He got a non-committal: "Yep", for an answer and pressed on: "If I remember correctly, you have been listening to the _Space Riders_ over and over back when we were stationed in the Fast..."

"Yeah, so what? Youthful folly." Spinski signaled for another drink.

"Is your sudden hate of one of the best Country bands in recent years somehow tied to a young, red-haired Vault Huntress who just happens to dislike Country music as well?"

"Gosh, Jessup, you just _have_ to spell it out, don't you?"

The Lieutenant grinned broadly. "Am I right?"

The holograms flickered, static filled the screen for a brief moment and then the hologram of an extremely muscular, topless man with sunglasses and a red bandana appeared. "HELLO FELLOW FANS OF GUNS, EXPLOSIONS AND AWESOME!"

"Oh shit", Jessup whispered. The Torgue Corporation had worked a little miracle as it was the only company to date that had come to Pandora and withdrawn in perfectly orderly fashion. They had taken everything that was worth taking, including everyone on the ground who wanted to leave, the better part of the Forge, every SDU capable of digistructing one of their robots as well as their vending machines, and left what they felt was unnecessary, including the big arena that had been reworked into the Underdome 2.0, the housing facilities of the Beatdown and of course their most famous spokesperson. The board of executives had quite simply kicked Mr. Torgue from his very own company and was actually pondering to change the corporation's name. The burly man of show business and explosions had ended up in Sanctuary, tinkering with weapons and playing Bunkers & Badasses with Tiny Tina, mostly sulking.

Apparently he had just now decided to make a comeback of one kind or another.

"It has been a FUCKING LONG TIME since I was last able to broadcast AND IT FEELS AWESOME TO BE BACK ON THE AIR! First off, as you may already have noticed, the doctor removed the digital censor attached to my voice box, which finally allows me to call those MOTHERFUCKING DICKBALL SHAREHOLDERS MOTHERFUCKING DICKBALL SHAREHOLDERS! THIS IS AWESOME, THANKS AND A HIGH-FIVE TO BADASS DR. ZED OVER IN SANCTUARY!"

By now everyone inside the bar had gathered around the holo-screen, even the dart players had left their boards and some passersby were silently slipping in. Apart from Mr. Torgue's thundering voice, the bar was perfectly silent.

"TODAY I intend to produce THE GREATEST EXPLOSION PANDORA HAS EVER SEEN! So stay tuned, loyal friends, as me and my assistant here ARE GOING TO BLOW THE WHOLE CITY OF OLD HAVEN SKY-HIGH! As courtesy demands, I'm now going to make room for my assistant to say some words. YOU MAY KNOW HER, SHE IS A TRUE EXPERT ON THE MATTER OF EXPLOSIONS AND I AM SO HAPPY TO HAVE HER HERE TODAY, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: TINY TINA!"

Mr. Torgue left the focus of the camera and Tina literally jumped whooping into the picture. However, as the camera was apparently fixed in place, only her head could be seen on the screen. "Helloooo all you fans out there! It's very nice to see your interest in explosions and if you're not interested in explosions _turn off now before I come and get you in your sleep!_ "

"Just for the record, this can be turned off?", Jessup asked.

"I could turn off the whole receiver, but I can't swap the channels", Cindy replied. "Already tried."

"How does he do it?", Spinski pondered.

"Now", Tina continued with an air of uttermost importance on her, "as my much valued colleague already explained, we are going to blow up the derelict city of Old Haven and we'll do this as a favor for a veeeeeery speciiiiiiiial friennnnnd of mine, butunfortunatelyshewantstostayanonymous. So, we're not no never telling her name. Girl, if you're watching now, this is for keeps." Tina spun around as if she had suddenly lost her interest in the camera. Odds were high that this was actually the case. "And of course it's a great chance to blow stuff up, which is always a good thing!"

"I couldn't have put it better, even if I tried", Mr. Torgue announced. The camera was picked up and followed Tiny Tina who was walking along the main road of Old Haven. Jessup knew the place from his time with the Lance, some of the corners shown held fond memories of shootouts with a certain group of Vault Hunters, even though the buildings were overgrown with vines and moss was plentiful on the walls. Then the facility came into view and Jessup dropped his glass. A number of high, square, stainless-steel towers rose up into the sky where the town centre had used to be. They displayed hardly any sign of wear and tear, the flat roofs held the usual ramshackle Pandoran buildings, indicating the facility had literally risen from the ground, and an orange sign was stenciled into the biggest of these towers: GP.

"So that's what they've been talking about", Jessup muttered. "When they told me some Hyperions had unearthed the Gortys Project... I always thought of them digging around in some badly lit tunnels."

"Now, this whole matter is a big FUCK YOU to Atlas", Mr. Torgue continued to explain, the camera zooming in on the towers. "For leaving their soldiers and workers on this planet to die, for destroying the lives of countless people, including Tina's special friend, and FOR BEING DAMNED TOUGH CONCURRENTS BACK IN THE DAYS WHEN I OWNED A WEAPONS COMPANY! BUT GUESS WHO'S STILL IN BUSINESS?! So because of Atlas being such marvelous assholes, we decided to skip on subtlety and drive our point home WITH A SLEDGEHAMMER! Figuratively."

The camera showed a close-up of the biggest tower. Explosives had been rigged to the wall, the lights on the detonators were blinking in perfect synch, acting like a luminous advertising that read: FUCK U ATLAS.

"But we got more!" The camera briefly zoomed out and focused on the next tower. The charges there formed a hand flipping the bird at the universe in general and Atlas in particular. "And last but not least..." The third tower filled the screen, equally adorned with explosives, this time in the shape of...

"They gotta be kidding", Spinski muttered.

"You should know a little more about Tiny Tina since that battle in the Tundra Express", Jessup remarked dryly.

"Now, of course, this depiction of a cute little bunny has nothing to do with our general message to Atlas, but it is REALLY CUTE and AWESOME and THERE WAS ABSOLUTELY NO NEED TO PUT IT UP, EXCEPT REASONS!"

"Well, you gotta know, partner, that this bunny's kinda like my trademark", Tiny Tina drawled. "Gotta mark yar territory for those noisy bandits and it's a nice tribute to ol' Mushy and Felicia. Now can we go on and start to blast things? Please? Pleeeeease?"

The camera swung around at a sickening speed (in fact, Jessup heard one of the other patrons throw up) and moved back the way it had come. "Of course these charges on the towers are just the tip of the EXPLOSIVE-BERG. We've mined this city thoroughly! Now we will quickly escape to a safe distance, before Tina will have the honor of making the countdown and THE CITY WILL BLOW UP BEHIND US AND I'M GOING TO ACCOMPANY IT WITH A SICK GUITAR SOLO AND IT WILL BE THE MOST AWESOME THING TO HAPPEN ON THIS PLANET SINCE THE VAULT HUNTERS FOUGHT THE BADASSASAURUS!"

"Badassa... what?", someone asked. Jessup spared a glance and was not surprised to see one of the smugglers. Only someone from abroad could ask about the Badassasaurus. Every Pandoran who had access to an ECHO-communicator knew in detail about the events of the infamous Campaign of Carnage, though not necessarily by choice. In order to broadcast off-planet, Torgue's signal had been strong enough to extinguish any other incoming (pirated) ECHOnet-channel for a full month.

"Alright, we have now reached safe ground", Mr. Torgue announced. The camera swirled once again (and once again Jessup heard someone retch) and was eventually mounted on a fixed position, showing Torgue, Old Haven with its redesigned skyline in the background and occasionally Tiny Tina who was jumping in and out of the picture like some sort of hyper excited bouncy ball. "At least we're going to presume that it is safe ground, because everything else would take away from the BADASSITY of all this."

"Lemme do the countdown, lemme do the countdown!", Tina demanded vigorously.

"All right then, fans, friends, watchers, this is it, THIS IS THE GREATEST EXPLOSION PANDORA WILL EVER SEE AND I'M SO PUMPED RIGHT NOW! WHOOHEY! COUNT AWAY, TINA!" Mr. Torgue posed in front of the camera, raising his arms, ready for the guitar solo.

"He has never worked with Tiny before", Jessup said, shaking his head.

"How can you tell?", one of the patrons inquired.

"Because he allowed her to make a countdown."

"Here we go folks!", Tina squealed in delight. "Ten... Nine... Eight... Seven... Ah, should do!"

The blast was deafening and Jessup had the distinctive feeling he heard it in the distance, not only through the speakers. The three towers of the Gortys facility erupted in glorious columns of fire and heat, reaching higher and higher into the sky, to the point where some people left the bar in a hurry, apparently hoping to catch a glimpse of them in real life. The initial shockwave ran through the lesser buildings of Old Haven like a scythe through wheat, literally cutting houses in two or simply crushing them flat. A millisecond later the charges in the city went off, ripping the ground apart, spewing debris and even more flames in every direction. Mr. Torgue managed to be louder than all that, shredding away on his air guitar and making unintelligible noises that sounded suspiciously like serious acoustic feedback. And still more and more bombs exploded, adding to the overall picture of utter destruction, until the showman was performing in front of a wall of flames.

"Slap me", Jessup said to no one in particular.

"Why?", Spinski asked curiously.

"Wanna make sure I'm not dreaming this up."

"I take that as an official order, Lieutenant, sir."

Jessup received a hard slap on the back of his head. "Ah, hurt. Fair enough. Thank you, Private."

Gradually, the fires died down. Pieces of debris were falling liberally from the sky and they were everything that was left of Old Haven. A regular nuke wouldn't have been half as thorough. The city had been replaced by a crater, pockmarked by cracks in the bedrock and lesser craters. And it was deep, too, leaving no trace of the shafts where the Gortys Project had been hidden for so many years. The ground was blackened, glowing purple in some places. Jessup had done enough fighting in the Ashes to recognize Slag when he saw it. The substance would leave the land barren for the next decade at least. If any one place on Pandora should have been classified a wasteland, the Lieutenant would have voted for this crater.

"MEEHOWEEHOWWEEEH! WAOH WAOH WAHOHWEEEE! THIS WAS TRULY AMAZING! And just to top it off we're going to show it again, this time in SLOW-MOTION! Stand ready!"

The screen dissolved into static for a couple of seconds, before the towers of the Gortys Project reappeared and their destruction was shown in slow motion, until Torgue stopped the footage. The charges had already gone off, but Jessup clearly saw the hand with the rude gesture, the writing concerning Atlas and the cute bunny's face outlined by explosions.

"And that, my friends, it art! True art! I mean, WHO DID EVER WRITE SOMETHING IN EXPLOSIONS?! I JUST DROPPED A SINGLE MANLY TEAR FOR THIS AND THAT DOESN'T HAPPEN VERY OFTEN, SUCKERS!"

"Did ya say sumthin?", Tiny Tina chimed in yet again, her voice sounding strangely off. "Thought ye sayed sumthin. Wooho, you recordin, ha? Gimme that, wanna say hi to the fans. Did I just say sumthin? Huhu, Imma talkin an I canna hear me own voice..."

"Oh, my assistant has been temporarily deafened, but don't worry, time will fix that! And as a man who has had more holes in his eardrums than ANYONE BEFORE OR AFTER I can assure that in writing. Now, this was Mr. Torgue and I'll return to you soon, with more explosions, more awesomeness and a hundred percent more guitar solos! OUTRO JINGLE! MOOHAWOOWOO MAHOWAHOW WOOMWOOM WAHOH!"

The freeze hologram of the explosive artwork flickered and was replaced by the regular ECHOnet program. Cindy turned it off immediately.

For the first time in years it was silent in the bar. Then someone in the background cleared his throat and asked the only logical question: "So, if he's back on the air... does that mean they'll continue with these collectable plastic models of explosions?"

The smugglers in the bar quickly exchanged glances and quietly slipped outside, leaving the crazy Pandorans to their own ends, as the discussion erupted. Jessup watched them go and reminded himself to question Spinski about the sudden change in his taste of music, once things had calmed down a bit. Not even the biggest explosion ever performed on Pandora would get the poor Private off that particular hook.


	6. Chapter 6: Evacuation

Chapter 6: Evacuation

"Let me guess: Tina's special friend is about as tall as me, has dark, bluish hair, wields a shield and amazingly still picks bones with Atlas", Maya concluded.

"Stands to reason." Jessup shrugged. "Just go over to Friedman and ask her."

Lilith's gaze would have been able to kill a Rakk Hive, as she looked out over the balcony, in the rough direction of Pierce Station. "Inconveniently the bitch isn't here at the moment. I'm already getting second thoughts on letting her go."

"Well, I'd call it a freak", Maya said. "She had absolutely no way of knowing that you would let her out just today. And what does it matter? Old Haven was a ghost town and not even the Crab Worms have made efforts to nest there. If Athena wants to raze the last remnants of Atlas to the ground and Torgue and Tina want to have a little fun in their personal field of expertise, let them, as long as they're not harming our guys."

"Why are _you_ defending this backstabbing so-and-so?", Lilith snarled.

Maya could have explained herself in detail, but she decided to wait until Jessup was out of the room. "Let's keep the focus here, please. So, Old Haven is gone. What else?"

"We're back to good news again, I suppose", the Lieutenant replied cautiously. "A last matter concerning Vault Hunters: Operation GTFO has been successful. I just got the ECHO before I came in here. The refugees are on the way to the Crater as we speak, but they're all still a bit shell-shocked, so we don't know in detail what happened."

"Must have been quite a ride, if it managed to shock Salvador", Maya commented, keeping the envy from her voice as best as she could.

"Oh, Salvador isn't shocked at all. He's just high on adrenaline, telling everyone except the ECHO how awesome the trip was..."

* * *

Salvador stood in the middle of Lynchwood's Main Road. Completely uncovered, alone and a gun in each hand, his personalized Vladof mini-gun, the Shredifier, and a shotgun from his days with the Sandpirates. He was shooting at everything that moved and most of it shot back.

He was having the time of his life.

A bandit charged him with a huge machete and the pellets of the shotgun stenciled a grinning skull-and-crossbones pattern into his chest. The bullets from his mini-gun formed an almost unbroken line of craters that lead from window to window to doorway to balcony to wherever else gunmen appeared. A Marauder was ducking in and out of cover, shooting his double-barreled wildly from the hip, never hitting a thing. Salvador provided him with a round of buckshot that necessitated intense dental work. A midget ran up to him, squealing and waving a grenade. The Shredifier caught the midget first, then the grenade in mid-air, after the dying maniac had dropped it. Instead of the blast, the gunzerker felt tiny electrical stings, wherever his shield absorbed damage, but nothing came through. "I'm completely badass", Salvador shouted, just because he could, finally reloading the minigun, when a dusty figure with a veiled face rose from cover and aimed an assault rifle at him.

There was a loud crack and the attacker dropped.

"Ey!", Salvador shouted, looking over his shoulder without a noteworthy effect on the amount of lead he let fly. "Hold your horses, hombre! I'm the shooter here."

The old man with the sniper rifle quickly muttered an apology, while Salvador assessed the situation behind his back in a heartbeat: The townspeople were hurrying after him, staying close together and keeping a healthy safety distance to the agitated Vault Hunter. Winger and his Skag-riders kept them together like sheepdogs. They busied themselves with stragglers late to the party and those bandits that were able to rise after the walking firestorm by the name of Salvador had hit them. All good here.

A couple of hours ago Sheriff Winger of Lynchwood had ECHOed the Crimson Raiders with a plea for help. The civilian populace of the town (or at least the Pandoran equivalent) had occupied Gunslinger's Corner after the timely death of the old sheriff and rode the remainder of the war out in relative peace. The bandits that had followed Nisha's challenging calls were still holed up in the main town, but infighting and the fact they didn't have Skag-riders at their disposal, made them pretty harmless. The townsfolk appreciated the efforts of the Crimson Raiders, but preferred to be left in peace - until just recently the Hodunks had arrived, declared the town as part of their territory and given the local gangs the choice between joining the clan or a grenade in their pants. Winger and his team of civilians and marshals, eighty-seven men, women and children in total, had repelled an attack by the newly unified bandits of Lynchwood and sent their distress call shortly after. They wanted to leave the town as soon as possible and any help in the evacuation would be dearly needed, especially help with a lot of firepower.

As it was difficult to bring vehicles to the hollow where the town had been constructed, Crimson Raider HQ had decided to evacuate the people via the railway tunnel that led west and have Moxxi's men pick them up there to bring them to the Badass Crater of Badassitude. There, the refugees would be able to register for Fast Travel and resettle wherever the Raiders saw fit. And to lead the townspeople through the bandit-infested bulk of Lynchwood, the Raiders had sent the closest thing they had to a tank.

"Ah, you should have brought a real gun, little guy", a Bruiser called, but unfortunately he was playing against the master of provocation. Salvador quickly lowered his shotgun for reloading and as his hand was already near the SDU, he produced a grenade (or two, it didn't really matter) and lobbed it (or them) at the oncoming colossus. The explosion blasted a crater into the pavement and slammed the bandit backwards. He never rose again.

Winger had greeted the Vault Hunter humorously. "I'd like to say I'm glad to see you back in town", the lawman had said, "but the last time you came here you shot it up pretty darn well, so I can't say it officially." The rest of the people had been a bit skeptical about the fact a single man, and a small one come to that, was supposed to help them run the gauntlet successfully. There had been a lot of arguing and whining and Salvador had felt the need to empty a magazine into the roof in order to lend the whole matter a bit of structure, but it had been Winger, with his calm and reasonable demeanor and his long history of caring for the citizens of Lynchwood, who had eventually convinced the people to trust the Vault Hunter.

Somewhere to his left someone screamed horribly. Salvador spared a glance. Dukino was squatting on a badly maimed Scavenger, barking happily and then pouncing off towards the next bandit. The reddish Skag had continued to grow; he was nowhere near his freaking mother, but big enough to serve as a mount, if he would have allowed anyone to climb on his back. Still, Dukino remained the most likeable Skag in the history of Lynchwood and wasn't interested in staying behind, if everyone else left, especially Winger, who had taken care of the more-than-half-tame Skag, Salvador, whom he had adopted as one sixth of a mother or something, and a certain female Skag ridden by one of the marshals.

The shotgun was starting to irritate the gunzerker, as he couldn't just keep the trigger down, so he switched to a Maliwan SMG. Within seconds the first bandits howled, as they were set ablaze by the sulfurous rounds, but it wasn't the same as the massive stopping power of a scatter gun. Someone really ought to invent a fully automatic shotgun these days. Mental note, ask Torgue about the matter. After all, the man was working really hard to realize this crazy sword-shooting gun Tina had come up with during a game of Bunkers & Badasses.

A MIRV went off in mid-air, showering him in child-grenades that cracked and boomed like firework around him. Due to his shield, they were about as dangerous as a firework, too. Nevertheless Salvador automatically tried to estimate the thrower's position, which was further simplified by three more grenades hurtling through the air. He avoided them by ducking into an alleyway. _Got you, pendejos._ Some bandits had set up a position on top of the pharmacy. Which was absurdly clever by bandit's standards, as someone on the street couldn't get a good angle at them (given said someone wasn't a thin, black-clad assassin who only ever spoke in haikus. Salvador had seen this guy perform shots that went literally _around a corner_ ).

"You're trying to hide!", he screamed, quickly changing weapons. "Mistake!"

He jumped back on the street, a rocket launcher in each hand, as if the weapons didn't weigh 15 kilos each. The gunzerker glimpsed a bright bandit who immediately jumped off the rooftop position, then he pulled the triggers, effectively robbing the pharmacy of its roof and then some. A quick look around showed him the bandits were retreating after this show of force.

"Can't run, can't hide!", Salvador cackled and switched back to machineguns. But as he set out to pursue the fleeing renegades, someone whistled piercingly. His first thought was simply: _Abuela_! Because that was exactly the kind of whistle his grandmother had always used to call him and his _hermanos_ back inside for some excruciatingly boring housework.

He turned quickly, but of course his _abuela_ was nowhere in sight. Winger was, however, letting his Skag pace in front of the tunnel entrance. The rest of Lynchwood's refugees had already disappeared into the darkness that was cut down by the rays of flashlights.

"Don't mean to interrupt", the Sheriff shouted, grinning broadly, "but - we're leaving now!"

At this point in his rampage Salvador was tempted to wave Winger goodbye and continue after the poor outlaws. Less than a year ago he would have done it, fair and square and without a tingle of remorse. But that would have been before he had met his friends who were all so much like him yet so different: Little Gaige, who had initially been shocked and horrified by the brutality of everyday Pandora and whom he had looked after in every firefight until Bloodshot Dam. Axton and Maya, who had come up with complicated but incredibly effective plans that required people to hold their fire at times or even retreat. Zero, who had waited calmly and patiently for the perfect moment to strike. And Krieg, who he had found so often lying in a pool of his own blood, screaming obscenities and just waiting for a _compadre_ to pass by and inject him with an Instant-Health.

Salvador heaved a deep sigh and ran after the Sheriff, into the tunnel.

The townspeople quickly let him through, staring at him in awe. A little boy was whispering to his mother: "See Mum, I told it would be alright, him's a Vault Hunter!" One of the marshals applauded. The old man with the sniper rifle muttered another apology. A woman with a thick steel helmet on her head and an assault rifle in her arms smiled at him. Salvador decided his morale just couldn't get enough boosts in a row and smiled back at the men and women he had covered. Then Dukino caught up to him, barking happily and trying to lick his face and the Skag was very lucky to do this in times of huge morale boosts, because otherwise Salvador would have been tempted to shoot him and to fabricate a story for the others (especially Krieg and Gaige!) in the aftermath.

The sun was blinding, when they reached the end of the tunnel. The train tracks disappeared into the Wasteland, dust-devils danced on the hilltops and Rakk screeched in the distance. This was the rendezvous point with Moxxi's men who would arrive in trucks and busses.

"Alright, _amigos_ , the worst part is over", Salvador said enthusiastically, though the high of the fight was starting to wear off. Perhaps he would go back and continue with his killing spree, once the townspeople where safely on their way to the Badass Crater of Badassitude (ah, he really loved that name!).

The refugees nodded agreement, muttered thanks, relaxed. They had escaped their besieged little corner of the world and they were all native Pandorans. They might have been afraid to risk all out war against brutal bandits, but even fiberglass would have a hard standing against their general durability. The Badlands weren't regarded as a threat or a problem, just a place to pass through.

"Very well done, partner", Winger said, strolling over to the Vault Hunter, holding his Skag by the reins.

Salvador grinned. "Ah, well, it was my pleasure. Besides, I'm still a deputy sheriff of Lynchwood, am I not?"

The Sheriff laughed. "Well, technically you are. But I'm far too sane to try and order _you_ or any of your fellow Vault Hunters around. Anyways, there's a matter you should know about, now that we're not being shot at."

"Alright, shoot."

"When the Hodunks arrived in Lynchwood, they tried to occupy the Grinders and everything else connected to the mining business, too. At first, they wanted to talk it out with the Rats, and when that didn't work, for obvious reasons, they went ballistic, which didn't end all too well either. Now, that's neither my business nor yours, but if I look at the bigger picture, I'd say the Hodunks want to help themselves to a piece of your lot's pie."

Salvador nodded slowly. That's what happened when people didn't listen to him! During the last Clan War, he had strongly advocated for taking out the Hodunks, but somehow the others had outvoted him. Yeah, just kill off the only people this side of the planet that could make a decent booze and leave the faction alive that was heavily motorized, claimed most of the Dead Sands for themselves and amazingly exceeded Brick in stubbornness. And now these rednecks were starting to get ideas about Eridium and maybe even selling it...

Something screamed. A high-pitched, ululating scream, inhuman and ear splitting. Some people dropped to the ground, clutching their ears. Just when the horrible sound faded out, a second scream followed, even shriller than the first one. Salvador saw some men and women collapse, blood running from their ears and noses and he himself had the feeling someone was driving a dull nail through his forehead. The world became dizzy for a moment, until the scream ended, thankfully.

Winger said something and Salvador had to lip-read most of it as his ears were yet on strike. After all those gunfights he was pretty adept at lip-reading in any case and Winger's question: "What the hell was that?!", wasn't exactly difficult to guess after what had just happened.

Salvador scanned the surrounding desert. Every movement of his head sent sharp pain into his brain and, for some odd reasons, into his eyes, which suddenly felt twice as big. But at least he saw the screamers, as they dug themselves from the sand.

Rats.

Lots and lots of Rats clawed their way out of shallow, covered holes in the dirt. Some swarmed out of the tunnel they had just cleared. And among them were three things... Salvador had seen and fought Lab-Rats before but these guys...

They were incredibly tall and lanky and when they walked their torsos swirled and bobbed like they were mounted on springs. This was because their legs had two knee-joints each, one normal, the other, lower one pointing backwards. They were wrapped in torn, dirty tunics, their hands sported claws and their faces were veiled except for their eyes, which lacked pupils. Salvador had always had the distinct feeling that the Rats kept the faces of their big brethren hidden because they couldn't stand the sight of them and therefore he had never removed a Lab-Rat's mask.

"Pendejos!", Salvador hissed, grabbed two guns and started to run, as fast as he could, while the smaller Rats converged on the shocked and unconscious townspeople. But the second he was spotted, one of the Lab-Rats laid its head back and screamed again. This time it forced the gunzerker to the ground. It was impossible to withstand this shrill, high-pitched sound. He couldn't move, he couldn't shoot, he was hardly self-aware anymore.

He needed a plan. By now, most of the refugees had passed out and on top of his other problems he would have to move them somehow, once he neutralized the Rats and their damn screamers. But how?! His usual tactics of charging into the fray was useless against these things. Where the hell had they...? But that was unimportant! The important thing were the giggling rats coming closer, ready to dice them and make stew of them! Something was already nudging his shoulder and as he jerked his head around, sending his brain into a new dimension of pain, he found himself eye to eye...

... with a Skag. A reddish Skag that looked really worried. The scream hadn't affected the beast! And as he carefully looked around, the other Skags appeared to be equally unimpressed by the sonic assault. In fact, the only thing that kept them from attacking the Rats, were the dazed and unconscious riders on their backs: As long as they felt deadweight, they knew better than to act impulsively.

"Dukino!", Salvador shouted at the top of his lungs. "Dukino! Fetch! Kill! Rip these monsters apart!"

He hardly heard his own voice, but Dukino definitely reacted. The big Skag growled and jumped at the nearest Rat, ripping a pretty big hole in its chest. The other mutants squealed and hissed in fright and anger and started to shoot at the beast, quickly jumping away from it.

While Dukino did an excellent job at distracting the enemy, Salvador crawled over to the nearest, unconscious Skag-Rider, pulled him from the saddle, and slapped the Skag in the rear. The armored creature bellowed and made good use of its new won freedom by attacking one of the lanky Lab-Rats, slamming it to the ground and clawing its throat open. Excellent, excellent...

The other Skags got more and more agitated, growling, barking, one of them vomited (or defecated, it was really the same thing with Skags) on a Rat that came too close for comfort. Salvador freed another beast of its rider and it stampeded straight into the carnage. At this point, one of the remaining Lab-Rats tried its thing again, but the Skags remained unaffected and Salvador had buried most of his head in the sand, thus escaping the brunt of the scream.

Rats were incredibly bad shots, even by the low standards of Pandoran bandits, and in close quarters their claws were no match against three powerful jaws, armor plating and the momentum of five hundred pounds of muscle. Therefore, the Skags occupied them far longer than they would have occupied any other native of Pandora.

After he set a fourth Skag on the loose, Salvador decided that there was more than enough distraction to draw a weapon. He managed without causing another scream. Good sign. He remained on his stomach while setting up a sniper rifle. Not his favored weapon, but it was designed to be fired from a person lying down, it had the gauge he needed and at least it was a Vladof.

The Lab-Rat's head was bobbing in and out of the crosshairs, even though the distance was laughable, so he aimed for the chest. A few rounds through the lungs should silence the mutant. Salvador held the trigger down and fired a burst that consumed half of the weapons clip, not to mention set the scope completely off target, but the Rat collapsed with a wild zig-zagging pattern of bulletholes in its chest. Salvador tried to ignore the fact that Zero would have been able to make this a sure headshot with a single bullet without the scope, while he jumped to his feet and drew the rocket launchers. No more time for subtlety, before the last remaining Screamer realized what was going on.

"Hasta la vista!", Salvador roared and fired.

Beneath its scarf the mutant opened its mouth to scream and then two missiles that were designed to pierce shielded armor on tanks, mechas and small spacecrafts hit it in the chest. They detonated on impact. The Lab-Rat disappeared like a sorcerer's apprentice: In a puff of red smoke.

His eyes were still asquint, his frontal lobe was throbbing like a Varkid-Pod and he had barely heard the rocket launchers, but Salvador shoved all these inconveniences aside and drew two random machineguns. "You sneaky little bastards! Maldito pendejos! Hijo de putas! Something obscene! You think you can get away?! You think you can make an ambush?! Knock _me_ out with a little sound?! Clearly, you have never been in a car where Gaige was allowed to choose the music!"

He was shooting while shouting, mowing the Rats down, occasionally hitting a rampaging Skag, but the beasts didn't care (yet). This was not his usual cheerful gunzerking rage: This was personal! These guys had forced him to his knees and that made him really angry. They were dead men (or whatever) on principle. Luckily the townspeople were out cold, otherwise he might have shot some of them, too, in order to eliminate witnesses to his momentary weakness. Though, the longer he thought about it, the more awesome it felt: These mutants had won the first match - and he had beaten them in the second one with ingenious wit and firepower and while the Rats bounced around in their unnatural way, dying one by one, Salvador started to laugh gleefully, mocking them with every step he made.

He was just done with the killing, when the cavalry appeared on the horizon: Three armored buses and two Outrunners. The drivers found a bunch of groaning and lamenting townspeople who were carefully dragging themselves back to their feet, lots of dead Rats, a couple of Skags feasting on the corpses and a Vault Hunter shooting two guns simultaneously into the air and laughing like mad.


	7. Chapter 7: Assets

Chapter 7: Assets

"Well, if guess we can wait for that story", Lilith said. "Any news from Zero?"

"Listen to it yourself", Jessup said and activated his ECHO.

"Twenty-three sandworms", Zero's even and serene voice recited, with just a hint of static. "The tally of mere two hours / This is getting dull. We're not quite ready yet / The men need to accustom / Still, we're moving south."

"I always feel uneasy after these reports", the Lieutenant remarked. "By the way, about Zero, did you ever find out...?"

"No", Maya interrupted. "None of my business. And none of yours either. Okay, they're coming back. By the time they reach Ellie's, they should have accustomed themselves properly."

"I hope so. Their mission is growing more necessary every day", Lilith said, massaging her forehead. "Alright, we've had Hyperion, Vault Hunters, Torgue... next point of order?"

"All our little enclaves and outposts", Maya prompted.

"We'll talk it through region by region, agreed?" Jessup bent forward over the holographic map in the middle of the room. Apart from the marker indicating Control Core Angel, where a hundred Hyperion men had holed up, the red H-symbols had vanished from the map and a considerable number of markers indicating Raider activity had popped up everywhere. However, there were also the markers of the Smoking Grenade and the Pit Babe in places that were controlled by a strong presence of bandits.

"Right, Frozen Wastes. The guys at the Ferry Port complain a lot about the cold and they didn't spot any ships either. We have some reports of Varkids escaping the Caustic Caverns, but the majority of these bugs prefers to stay underground. Probably warmer down there. For now, mind you, as Three Horns is slowly thawing. In fact, our guys at Southpaw had their first little harvest of bladeflowers. We've got ourselves some self supporters. Speaking of Southpaw, they're done with their, ah, spring-clean and got the first chargers ready. Slow but steady, as predicted."

"Great, send them every drained energy core we've got in town", Lilith interrupted. "And make sure to spread the word to all the other outposts."

"The latter is already done", Jessup confirmed.

"What about the Shelf?", Maya asked innocently.

"What about it? There are still some Rippers holed up in Blackburn Cove, but they don't pose a threat..."

"And what about the Soaring Dragon?"

"Why do I hear Scooter talking, all of a sudden?", Lilith sighed.

"Because he has a point. It's a matter of less than a day. Go there, secure the big guns to the shoreline and leave them until a proper salvage crew comes along..."

"You really want to go out and do stuff, don't you?", Lilith said with a faint smirk. "Fine, fine. Just stay till the end of this report, will you?"

Maya grinned. "Great! Mind if I take some Eridium? That would enable me to move these canons with Phaselock..."

Jessup coughed into his hand. "Next topic in the Wastes, Bloodshot Dam. Another Hodunk-patrol tried to force its way into the Valley past the fortress, but as far as I'm informed, they got cleaved."

"Sounds like Krieg is having fun", Maya remarked with a smile.

"Yeah. _He_ is, the rest of the crew is... a bit nervous with a seven feet psycho around. And _I_ would prefer if he stopped meddling with the ECHO-reports. _I wanted my flank steak blue rare! Not well done!_ ", he said in a surprisingly good impression of Krieg's voice. "What's that supposed to mean anyhow?"

"He discovered Flanksteak's corpse and was sad that Hyperion charred that asshole before he himself had the chance to do it", Maya translated. She had spent enough time with the psycho to understand the general meaning beneath his rants, maniacal cries and bloody metaphors. Mostly.

"Well, thanks for interpreting. Inside the Dam, our men have discovered quite an armory. Nothing fancy, really, you know Bandit guns, but there's lots of spare parts that might come in handy. Maybe we could give Torgue something useful to do."

"Sounds like a plan", Lilith agreed. "Any estimates on when we'll be able to use the dam as a power plant?"

"Ages, and I'm quoting. Again. The turbines are completely broken, the supply pipes are blocked by corpses, debris and a lot of silt, the wiring is a joke, cooling systems are in shambles, everything below the waterline is rusted to the point of material failure, structural integrity..."

Lilith covered her ears. "I get it! It's a dead end, right?"

"Yes, ma'am", Jessup replied glibly. "I would however advise not to abandon the Dam but to use it as a strongpoint. In that way, it is truly invaluable. An excellent blocking position against the Hodunks, to start with."

"Soldiers and sarcasm don't mix", Maya remarked.

"Neither do Sirens and engineering", Jessup retorted. "Look at the damn dam! Getting it back in working order was never on the table and yet..."

"... I kept asking", Lilith finished, hanging her head. "It would have been a major convenience if we could, though."

"And it would have required to flood the better part of Three Horns Valley, in order to make it work with an energy conversion efficiency bigger than zero, if you get my drift", Jessup added. "Never mind. This isn't the planet for conveniences. I personally never thought I'd ever eat anything than bladeflower-salad to keep my teeth from rotting and falling out, until the smugglers flew in real _apples_. Speaking of food, the farmland north of the Express lines is doing fine, so fine they thought it noteworthy that seventy-nine out of five hundred wheat seeds have actually taken root in Pandoran soil. And then there's this matter about the Ranch..."

"Listen, I understand that it's unnerving to work around huge, pink mines", Lilith sighed, "but Tina is adamant about leaving them where they are."

Jessup blinked in surprise. "Yes... that's true. But that's not the topic: One of the smugglers asked for permission to set up a medical lab directly at the Varkid Ranch. He and his colleagues would bring their own equipment, pay rent and of course pay for the material we provide through the Ranch."

"Oh. And would it be safe to presume he could pay in kind, namely his finished products?"

"You'd have to bargain, ma'am, but it's definitely a possibility."

"Hang on a second", Maya interrupted. "The Varkid Ranch? You never mentioned you reopened it!"

"Well, it was an easy thing to do at the time." Jessup shrugged. "After the trains stopped coming through, the bandits moved on, Tina and Mordecai knew the ins and outs of the region and the facility was in pretty good shape to begin with. Reconnect the wires, torch all the hives around Skittering Mound and just like that we had a second lucrative leg to stand on, apart from the Eridium."

"I don't get it. Who would want to have _anything_ to do with these bugs?"

"Just about every health professional in the six galaxies", Lilith replied.

"And... why exactly is that?"

Jessup unstrapped a plastic container from his belt and tossed it over to Maya. The Siren caught the container reflexively and peered inside. It was a med-kit, holding three injectors with bright red liquid. "Do you know something about cellular biology?"

Maya cocked her head. "Not much, really. I know that there are stem-cells in these injectors, I know they speed up the body's own regeneration and I know they take fifteen seconds to fall victim to white blood corpuscles, which is the reason they can't heal wounds above a certain size or severity."

"Exactly. Stem-cells that can adapt to any given DNA within milliseconds. That can spur regeneration to grow such complicated things as muscles or nerves. And to top it all off, these stem-cells don't leach you, they don't suck you dry of all the energy that would normally be necessary to heal any wound over time. These beauties are the Holy Grail of modern cellular biology. Anshin spent billions to develop them. It took more than a lifetime. And just when they were finished and happily padded each other on the back, Atlas decided to colonize Pandora and stumbled upon the Varkids which, as you probably know, have the ability to change their complete physiology within mere seconds without needing to stop and rest for the remainder of the day."

Very slowly, Maya lowered the med-kit. "I'm not sure I want to hear the end of it."

"Too late now, killer", Lilith smirked. "Don't worry: My face looked exactly like yours when Zed first told me."

"Now", Jessup continued, fighting back a laugh, "it is relatively easy to isolate the genes that cause Varkids to morph, which is already half the battle: Growth, speed and no serious side effects. After that the genome needs to be generalized, scrubbed clean of precise orders what to grow exactly and spliced with the necessary commands to grow human tissue instead of chitin, but stuff like that's been done since the 34. century. And just like that, you have the stem-cells you need. Well, it still requires skill and knowledge and a lot of technology to do it and I'm guessing Dr. Zed refrained from explaining a lot of details, but that's not the point. The point is, Varkid-genome is easy to harvest, it's there in abundance and it's far, far cheaper than painstakingly cooking up a whole genome in your lab. Of course, Atlas kept this as silent as possible, fearing a corporation war with Anshin. Why risk it? They started farming Varkids for their own ends, cutting amazing costs in the medical department. Dahl followed suit, of course. Eventually the rumor started to spread and the black marketeers and back alley doctors were knocking politely on the door, while Anshin and Atlas fought it out. In a courtroom, but it was still pretty vicious."

Maya's hands were slightly shaking, when she returned the med-kit to Jessup. She had taken countless stem-cell injections. Her arm would have looked like a junkie's if the effects of the injection didn't effectively close every pinprick. And most of the time she had been using the refined genome of giant, disgusting bugs that had tried to kill her on numerous occasions.

"Knowledge is not always beneficial", Lilith observed, grinning broadly now. "As of today, we have simply extracted genetic material and sold it to the smugglers. But with a med-lab that exceeds Dr. Zed's little clinic..."

"We could cook our own Instant-Health", Maya concluded and felt the sudden urge to retch.

"Well, technically Dr. Zed already spends most of his spare time distilling stem-cells, but he's just one man and his methods aren't exactly quick", Jessup added. "That's why he's selling them for such high prices."

"Let's change the subject", Lilith suggested quickly. Maya gave her fellow siren a grateful look. Varkid-DNA processed by notorious, though effective, Dr. Zed, that was definitely a combination she didn't want to linger on any longer. It would probably return at night to haunt her in her sleep in any case.

"Alright. Highlands." Jessup straightened up. "Heavy Stalker attacks on Overlook, the Mill and even on Slab-Town. They're getting cockier, as the summer grows warmer, nothing unexpected. A couple of Threshers managed to dig under the foundation of Opportunity and surfaced in a flower bed. Scared the hell out of our salvage crews, but two were shot and a third one tried to jump and fabulously missed the next patch of soft ground. Ran headfirst into a steel wall. I'll send you the link for the video, if you like. Twenty three refugees arrived in Opportunity, five in Overlook."

"Nothing out of the ordinary", Maya said impatiently. The Highlands were the stronghold of the Crimson Raiders, with Sanctuary floating overhead and the allied settlements of Slab-Town and Overlook close by. Hyperion had abandoned every outpost in the region after Handsome Jack's death. No shareholder held any interest in Jack's narcissistic project called Opportunity, Control Core Angel had lost all importance (that was, until people needed a bunker) and with these two main assets out of the picture, the power plant in the Outwash became a liability, suffering under constant Thresher attacks. From a very early point onwards, the Raiders had had control of the region, apart from the wildlife. Word had spread via the ECHOnet and people started to leave their hovels and small, rickety fortresses in order to resettle in a place were neither Hyperion nor bandits seemed to be a problem.

"Okay, the Blight", Jessup moved on. "No eruption of Mount Hellsfont in the last twenty four hours, apart from a couple of geysers, the wind is up, blowing in from the sea. There's so much ash in the air, Brick's copters won't move in to get the shipload ready at the Eridium Extraction Plant until at least five hours from now. Already told the smugglers, they don't seem to mind. There's another shipment of salvaged material ready at Hero's Pass, too, but that takes a backseat to Eridium. Waffles sent me an inventory list." The Lieutenant took out his ECHO and scrolled across the screen. "Wiring, electrical parts, generators, couple of turrets... that should make Scooter's day, whenever the stuff arrives. Oh, and the salvage crew found the corpses of two Fire-Cultists close to the Vault. Waffles thought you might want to know."

"I really, _really_ , hope they were the last of them", Lilith sighed, rubbing her eyes.

"That's exactly what he predicted you would say. The Slag Scar has seen a three way battle between the Sawteeth, the Hodunks and the Bullymongs. Nasty business, but it's really not our problem at the moment. And the only exciting thing in the Nexus was Marks' catch earlier today, so that's it for the Blight. Which brings us to the most pressing matter: Dead Sands."

"Hodunks", Lilith added and made a face.

"Hodunks", Maya repeated somewhat irritated. "I hear more of those guys than I expected. Lynchwood, the fighting around Bloodshot Dam... Weren't they hit by the last Clan War?"

"Yes, but look at the bigger picture", Lilith explained grimly, pointing to various locations on the map. "The Rippers - restricted to Southern Shelf and most probably being devoured by Bullymongs right now. The Bloodshots - virtually extinct. The Zafords - if any of them are alive, they won't show their mugs for quite a while. The Sawteeth - well, they have their strongholds over in the Blight, but they're still quite shaken by the loss of Mortar. The Rockerboys - Bossanova was the only thing that held them together to begin with and he's dead. No one knows what has happened to the Queenpin. Which leaves the Hodunks as the biggest, intact bandit clan out there. And they've proven their strength by _winning_ their latest Clan War, irrespective of their own losses. So they can liberally refill their ranks with all the drifting bandits and sand pirates in the Sands, the Wastes and from the Northern Coast."

"Is there any way that _we_ may recruit these drifters via the Slabs?", Maya suggested.

"Oh, you're an initiated member of the gang. Can you think of any reason why people would possibly try to avoid the welcoming party?"

"Can't you talk some sense into Brick? To lower the standards?"

"Talk some sense into Brick", Lilith repeated, staring at Maya as if she had stated that the sky was green. "Talk some... Okay, you don't know him half as long as I do, but still, you should know him well enough. Brick is stubborn beyond the understanding of mankind. This guy can't be reasoned with. It's like talking to a sack of..." She paused.

"I see what you did there", Jessup said and chuckled. "But Brick is definitely not the problem. The problem are sporting rednecks. They try to occupy territory in the Blight, in Three Horns, they succeeded in Lynchwood and they made permanent camp in Oasis which I personally find quite amusing. However, they have the common sense to skirt the Crater. The Hodunks may be dim, but they understand that everyone on Pandora will be after their asses, if they mess up Moxxi's entertainment business."

Maya nodded. Although the clan seemed to pose a serious problem, she felt excitement rather than concern. This promised to be action-packed. "So, what are we going to do about them? Open warfare?"

"Not if we can help it", Lilith replied and grinned maliciously. "Why obliterate someone you can scare into submission?"

Maya quickly joined the dots. "Okay... so we're just waiting for Zero to get back from Wurmwater..."

"And we'll strike", Jessup concluded. "Yes. Now, just to wrap up the daily report, last friendly outpost in the desert: Ellie's Garage. The guys, believe it or not, are having a blast. Can't say I don't understand them. Most of what they're doing is waiting around and they don't need to fear for their lives for once. Scouts have two opportune targets for a small scale raid in their sights, it's up to you if they should attack. Concerning targets for the big raid, there seems to be something appropriate on the way, but it would require Zero to be back at Ellie's in three days."

"I'll properly light a fire under him", Lilith promised.

Jessup clapped his hands. "Well, that was it for today. Thank you, you welcome, fall out!"

"I'm off to the Shelf", Maya announced, heading for the door.

Lilith nodded approval. "Jessup, before you're allowed to 'fall out', you bring me Marcus and the smugglers who wanted to move in at the Varkid Ranch."

"Consider it done, ma'am."

* * *

A/N: As we're already in a chapter featuring almost exclusively dialogue and exposition here, I wanted to finally insert my official disclaimer: I don't own any part of the Borderlands Franchise, I won't ever try to monetize this Story in any sense of the word and my deepest respect for those creative heads that came up with all those incredible colourful, crazy and yet likeable characters.

Also, I'd like to thank you all for reading! I've been writing for years now, but I hardly ever got the chance to publish it in any way. Which makes it all the greater to have people that read and apparently like what I've cooked up in my head. Big thanks to all of you, you're awesome! Even bigger thanks to the trusty followers amongst you and the reviewers! You truly made my day whenever you signed up! :-D

And, finally, to compensate for the lack of action in this chapter (and the fact we didn't leave Raider's HQ), the next chapter should be up in a matter of minutes...


	8. Chapter 8: Salvage

Chapter 8: Salvage

"Is you never cold, ma'am?", Private DeStepan asked. His voice was muffled by a thick scarf covering his face from the nose downwards, which in cooperation with a furry beanie and earflaps made it absolutely impossible to discern any distinctive features about the soldier's appearance.

"No", Maya replied without lowering her binoculars. She stood in the bow of the craft like a figurehead, tall and unshaken by anything the rough sea and the wind could throw at her. "Courtesy of being a Siren."

"I see", the Private muttered. "So... once this mission's over, me and Burns will be transferred elsewhere?"

"Depends on your behavior during the mission." Maya had picked up DeStepan and his pal Burns at the Ferry Port and now the trio was on its way to the Southern Shelf. By boat. At least they weren't forced to use Claptrap's old barge, but even the Hyperion speedboat had spent three hours at sea already.

Maya's enthusiasm at going back in the field had been severely curbed once she discovered the Fast Travel station in Liar's Berg was marked as inoperable by the network. The quick little salvage run had been growing longer ever since: first, Maya had travelled to Digistruct Peak and asked Tannis for help, but the scientist had been unable to reconnect Liar's Berg by digital means. She had explained something about hardware failure, the effects of cold weather on high-tech equipment and when Maya had eyed the first syringe Tannis was innocently hiding behind her back, the Siren had departed.

With no friendlies left on the Shelf, the only way to the Soaring Dragon was by conventional means: Maya had requested an Outrunner in Three Horns and driven all the way to the Ferry Port, getting into a serious quarrel with a particularly vicious Bullymong on the way. She didn't mind letting off some steam though, and it was shortly before complete sundown that she reached the station.

Ferry Port outpost had been set up next to the old jetty where Maya and the other Vault Hunters had reached mainland Pandora so long ago: A watchtower on the cliff with a thicket of antennae on the roof, a Hyperion freighter that served as living quarters and something that Mordecai had once called "our cute little navy", a name that stuck firmly. The "navy" consisted of Claptrap's ship, the freighter, a fan boat (souvenir from Aegrus), a floating junkyard (a number of small barges and rafts tied together in which the flotsam piled higher and higher) and three small speedboats the salvage crews had found in Opportunity.

The outpost had been constructed solely for surveillance purposes: the three men here kept an eye on the seas from the smoldering remains of the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve to the Southern Shelf, assisted by some equally salvaged drones. Nobody knew how many ships roamed the icy seas and if any of them tried to make landfall, Lilith deemed it beneficial to know well enough in advance.

Over time, however, Ferry Port had developed a secondary purpose. On a planet with omnipresent mortal danger, the threat of death or pain just wasn't original enough to keep people in line on their daily routine. Laziness, sloppiness and small-scale insubordination had originally been punished by tying the culprit up and locking him in a room with Claptrap for an hour or two. Sending them off to Ferry Port to freeze and pall for a week while still doing generally useful work had eventually been considered a far more humane method of punishment by everyone (the culprits included and Claptrap excepted).

Naturally, the soldiers had been jumping at a chance to leave the station.

"So, what we're about to do", DeStepan started out, "we're making a quick run to the Soaring Dragon, mark capital weaponry, tie it to the coastline and leave again. Oh, and reconnect the Fast Travel in Liar's Berg if possible. Did I miss anything?"

Maya would have smiled, if the soldier hadn't been going on and on about the mission's objectives ever since they had climbed aboard the speedboat. On one hand, she could understand him: this was his chance to cut his time at Ferry Port short and he didn't want to screw up. On the other hand, he was starting to get on her nerves in biblical proportions. "No, Private, this is everything and now shut up, before I staple your lips together."

DeStepan opened his mouth to answer and decided just in time to nod, rather than to say another word. He was originally from Overlook and had enlisted the moment Dr. Zed had declared his skull-shivers to be healed. As a native Pandoran, he was a good fighter and absolved Digistruct Peak with honors, but he wasn't too fond of the strict hierarchy within the Raiders. After a number of arguments with higher ranking officers and on one occasion even with Mordecai, he had found himself at one of the colder spots on Pandora's surface.

"I've got the coastline on the radar", Burns announced through an open window on the bridge. "And a thermal image of something big and hot. Five degrees starboard. I'm just going to presume it's the Dragon and not a leviathan in order to sleep better."

"Leviathan?", Maya inquired, while pointing her binoculars in the indicated direction. Yes, there was a solid black shape on the horizon, visible even in the scattered light of Elpis and the stars.

"Ever seen any of those big fish skeletons on shore?", Burns retorted. "Now, imagine those being alive and thriving and circling under your keel. Or, the more I think about it, don't. Do not, and I repeat, do not think about huge, monstrous fishes for your personal comfort."

Maya sighed. "Too late now. Anyway, it's most probably the Dragon. Alter course accordingly."

"Copy that." The speedboat turned without slowing down, jumping over a wave in the process. The craft shook violently, when it slammed back into the water, and DeStepan toppled backwards onto the deck. Maya remained upright.

"Burns?"

"Aye, ma'am?"

"You seem to know a bit about maritime life. What's a sharay?"

"Cross-breed of a shark and a steam roller. 'Bout as big as a human, huge, flat fins, poisonous tail and a lot of teeth. Normally not in these waters, though. They prefer it warm."

"Thanks."

"Always a pleasure."

The Soaring Dragon was now clearly in sight. The flamethrower in the figurehead was still active, but lacking intensity and reach. Probably running out of fuel. The sails had fared badly in the winds, they were ripped and torn. Most notably, the freighter had tilted aft. It was still stuck firmly in the brash ice, meters above the waterline, but the stern was lower than the bow. Maybe Scooter was right and the ice was melting. Or maybe something had caved in below the stern or another one of over a dozen possible explanation immediately provided by Maya's vivid fantasy.

"Right, drop me off at the ship and move on to Gateway Harbor", the Siren instructed the soldiers. "Fix the Fast Travel, if you can, and come find me afterwards. Tie down Big Bertha on the Ice Sickle on your way. There's a SDU full of chains and cables below decks."

"Yes, ma'am!", Burns said. DeStepan remained silent, probably still fearing the stapler.

The speedboat slowed down a bit. Apart from the regular flamethrower bursts, the ship and the settlement along its destroyed starboard side were wrapped in darkness. Burns carefully maneuvered the boat closer towards the frozen surface, until Maya could jump ashore.

"Don't keep me waiting!", she called over, as the speedboat turned in a tight circle, heading out of the bay.

"Don't worry, ma'am, we'll be back in a heartbeat!", Burns shouted. The subtitles read: After all, we'll need you to put in a good word for us with Lilith, so she lets us leave Ferry Port.

Maya entered the settlement through the big, sheet metal gate. Some discarded weapons lay around alongside a psycho in full body armor which apparently had proven too thick for the Rakk to chew through and too heavy to carry away. All other corpses were gone without a trace, but Maya knew were they had lain. She couldn't help but smile: It was here they had first fought together as a team. Out of necessity, but nevertheless. She remembered her anger at Salvador, because he had just rushed into the enemy camp without any precautions, her annoyance with Axton, because he had constantly tried to shield her from harm, as if she couldn't defend herself, her awe at Zero's unparalleled skills, her worry about Gaige who had hardly ever shot a gun before and her nervousness about Krieg, who was only with the group because she had told the others to let him come along, a thought that didn't seem too good once she saw again what he could do to human beings.

Maya passed below the figurehead, remembering how at this very spot Axton had tried to inject Gaige with an Instant-Health, only to break the needle at her robotic arm in the hurry. She could almost hear him defend himself: "If in doubt, inject in the left arm, always the left arm, that's what they taught me! By the way, Badass over... ah, never mind." Then she heard someone whistle a tune and banned any memories from her mind.

A man stepped out of a dark hut, carrying a large crate with both hands. He had taped a flashlight to his hat, but the light of course didn't shine on him and made it in fact harder to see him. Maya ducked behind a barrel. Despite everything that had happened, she had massive scruples about shooting an unarmed person. Nevertheless, she drew a pistol. The man veered away from her position, walking in the direction of the ship's starboard side. Maya followed him, silent as a cat (though not as silent as Zero). The constant whistling of an oddly familiar tune droned out every crunch of snow under her boots anyhow.

Eventually, Maya was close enough and jabbed the barrel of her pistol against the stranger's neck. "Don't move. Hands in the air."

The man complied immediately, dropping the crate. "Oh, Mariajesusandmoses, please don't shoot me, I've got a family at home, five kids, a cute little kitten..."

"Shut it. Who are you? What are you doing here?"

"I'm just looking around... sorry, really sorry, I didn't mean to take your stuff, this whole site has been abandoned ever since we came here..."

"We?"

"Oh sure, the rest of the crew is up ahead... wait a sec, you know what, they're surely waiting for me, because I was supposed to look for some provisions, so they'll come looking for me any moment now and you don't want to stand up against the big lads, trust me, so you better let me go..."

"You're not from around here, are you?"

"I'm originally from Cerberus, yes. What gave me away?"

Maya paused for a moment. This man appeared very sane to her. Decidedly no Ripper, probably not even a bandit in the common sense. He was walking around the settlement without a weapon at the ready, which indicated he and his peers had been here long enough to get comfortable.

"Can I go now?", the man from Cerberus asked, when Maya remained silent for too long.

"Not quite yet. Did you demolish the Fast Travel in Liar's Berg?"

"No! I didn't! That was Pete and Sickles, they disconnected the generator and removed the solar cells..."

"And why all that? What are you doing here?"

"We're trying to get the ship seaworthy."

"In order to...?"

"Pillage, plunder and earn enough to get out of here. We came for Captain Blade's treasure but now some Vault Hunters took it. So, we are a bunch of broke, demoralized and lost treasure hunters who just want to get off this planet, back to our families, and did I mention the kitten...?"

"Who is your leader?"

"Torben!", someone shouted up ahead. Flashlight rays and the sound of booted feet on snow were drawing closer from the dark huts and shelters crouched beneath the massive hull of the Dragon. Another voice called: "Torben!"

"That's my pals", Torben from Cerberus explained. "Mind to let me go now?"

"All right, we'll go. Slow and steady. No sudden movements. Let's talk to your pals, shall we? And you still owe me an answer concerning your leadership."

"Oh, we just call her the Captain. Missing eye, prosthetic leg, prosthetic arm with an enormous hook, red hair..."

"Scarlett", Maya muttered.

"Eh... no? Her hair is red, not scarlet and how would you know in any case..."

"Torben!" The first man of the search party had spotted his companion and his predicament. He whistled piercingly and one by one the remaining members of the gang appeared and formed a semicircle around Maya and her prisoner.

"Thanks for coming!", Torben shouted happily. "See, lady, I told you, didn't I?"

"Shut it!" Maya assessed the men gathered in front of her. Until now, six had arrived, but she heard the shuffling of more coming. They were outfitted like DeStepan, lots of coats and scarves, and each carried a weapon, mostly rifles and shotguns. One guy in particular stood out: He was huge, wore crude steel armor on his torso, a helmet with a faceplate and leaned on a long harpoon.

"So... what now?", one of the adventurers broke the silence.

"Where's the Captain? I'd like to have a chat with her."

"Not 'ere, lady", the harpooner replied in a deep and hoarse voice. "Not even on board now. Ye want te talk, ye gotta talk te us."

"Fine. You lot are treasure-hunters, aren't you?"

The men exchanged glances and murmured approval. Even the harpooner nodded.

"And you want to get off this planet?"

"Why're ye interested, lassie?!", the harpooner boomed

"Because in that case, I'm certain we could make a deal. I'm a member of the Crimson Raiders, we have sure and safe off-world connections. If you work with us, you'll be on your way back home within less than a year. No need for you to repair this ship or risk your lives as pirates."

"Hey, that's the witch!", a newcomer shouted. Maya recognized the paunchy, black bearded figure by the voice: It was Mercer, the ship's cook from the _Buccaneers Bacchanal_. "She's the one that killed half our crew at Magny's Lighthouse AND the one to take Blade's treasure!"

"Is that true?", Torben asked and tried to turn his head, in order to get a glimpse at his captor.

"Does it matter?", Maya responded. "Sand under the bridge. As it is, _you_ want to go hunt treasure somewhere else and _I_ have the means to help you..."

"Release Torben!", another man demanded. "No need for you to keep a hostage, if you want to help us."

Seeing the murderous glare in the eyes of Mercer and a small number of other adventurers, the Siren shook her head. "I'm sorry, but unless you disarm Mercer and his mates there, I wouldn't feel too safe without some leverage."

"Safe?!", the cook spluttered. "Are you kidding me? You could kill all of us with a thought, if you wanted to! Don't listen to her singing! She's a goddamn Siren! And as an honest sailor, I don't intend to repeat my ancestors mistakes!"

"Oi, calm down, mate!", the harpooner intervened. "Did ye notice, she 'asn't killed us with a thought yet? She jus' wants te talk and I really want te 'ear 'er out."

"Thank you." Maya gave the huge man a gracious nod. "Now, it's really a simple matter. The Crimson Raiders could always use a number of tough, sane, resourceful and battle hardened gentlemen like yourselves. You've come here as treasure hunters, maybe even Vault Hunters, haven't you? You don't need to become bandits in order to get off this world. In fact, you don't deserve it. Join the Raiders. All our men get paid handsomely, board and lodge are free and since Hyperion is gone, the mortality rates are at an all time low."

"What would we have to do, if we joined up?", someone asked.

"Whatever you prefer: Salvage Hyperion facilities, patrol the territory, pull guard duty, if you're in for some ... excitement, you can join the hunter squads and track down rampant Threshers or Stalkers."

"Where's the catch?", Mercer asked slyly.

"Well, there is still a risk a getting killed, but I take it you're all familiar with that risk", Maya replied, shrugging. "It's your choice. Repair this wreck here and..."

And in that instant she felt something slam against her head. She impact knocked her off her feet and even before she fell to the ground, she felt her shield collapse with the usual electrical sting at her hip. She saw Torben fall to the ground as well and wondered why, but once she was lying backwards in the snow, the treasure hunter jumped to his feet and ran over to his colleagues.

Sniper. Someone had managed to score a headshot on her. Without her shield, she would have been dead now. In any case, it had been an incredible shot, given that Torben was fine.

Before Maya could get back on her feet, a grenade landed neatly between her spread legs, trailing a thick cloud of smoke. Within a heartbeat, the Siren found herself inside a protective cocoon of white, odorless haze, while chaos and shouting erupted over in the pirates' camp. More shots rang and while Maya rolled backwards and came up on one knee, she could see wisps of smoke curling when bullets went through.

"Witchcraft!", Mercer yelled at the top of his lungs. "I told you, I told y..."

"Ye lousy, greasy... can opener!", the harpooner roared. "Ye understand what ye did there?!"

"All right, ma'am?" Burns and DeStepan appeared out of the mist, their weapons at the ready. Both had donned their Crimson Lance integral helmets, as the infrared goggles inside would allow them to see through the smoke.

"I'm fine", Maya proclaimed, while her shield recharged with a soothing, humming sound.

"Shall we engage?", Burns continued. "And if so, who? There seems to be some infighting going on."

Without waiting any longer Maya ran out of the smoke screen, armed with only a pistol. She assessed the situation automatically, the way she had been taught over and over: By now, the numbers of the pirates had swelled to a whooping two dozen, but nine of them, including Torben, were standing back and nervously watching the show, while the rest was quite equally divided: Mercer and a gang of six were arguing and in some cases already brawling with the harpooner and his friends, eight men in total.

"Oh, there she is!", Torben cried, once Maya appeared out of the smoke.

One of Mercers men immediately made a dash for her with a huge Torgue-shotgun, but she didn't even flinch, raised her pistol and was pleasantly surprised by the burst of automatic fire, coming from the smoke, that dropped the attacker.

The harpooner, who had lifted Mercer off the ground by the lapel with one hand, turned towards the Siren. "Lady, let me explain, these bilge rats 'ere were trying to off ye, which I'm personally terrible sorry about..."

Maya noticed one of the brawlers lifting a sniper rifle and pointing it in her direction. _Not this time, sucker_. The tattoos on her left arm glowed, as her hand felt for the place beyond places and ripped a part of it through the barriers of space and time. A blue sphere closed around the sniper and yanked him bodily into the air, his weapon lost on the ground. Flexing her fingers, the Siren adjusted the gravity she could pull from that other place, directing the force to attract the remainders of Mercer's gang, excluding the cook himself, who remained in the harpooner's grip.

"Now, that's what I call witchcraft", a man on the ground croaked, who had been in a fistfight with one of Mercer's comrades.

"And you are going to trust someone who can pull off shit like that?!", Mercer roared, unfazed by his own awkward situation.

"I'm trusting her as far as the muzzle of my sawed-off!", one of the adventurers replied. "But at least I want to hear what she has to say."

"Because right now it sounds a whole fucking lot better than what the Captain has to offer", another man chimed in.

"Little help!", someone in the tangle of bodies high in the air piped.

"Speaking of your Captain", Maya intervened, "do you know about her long record of betrayal and backstabbing? Mercer, why don't you tell your colleagues here about what happened to Sandman? To Big Sleep? Herbert? Didn't she send her last crew into a fight against six Vault Hunters, while she herself raced towards Blade's treasure?"

Mercer was staring daggers, but everyone else looked reasonably distrustful. Including the men in Phaselock, wherefore Maya released them. They piled up on the ground, moaning and grunting and not daring to disentangle themselves.

"Anyhow, you can still stay here and patch up this ship, before the ice breaks. Your decision and I thoroughly respect people who want to try their luck with Pandora on their own." Maya stepped forwards. No one lifted a weapon. "But if you want to join the Raiders, feel free to come to Sanctuary."

"And give up our freedom, eh?!" Mercer was nothing if not fearless.

"Don't know about you, but I actually prefers people who pay me for putting my ass on the line", a man with a bionic jawbone said.

"Here, we even have to scavenge our own provisions!", Torben added.

"Aye, I'd prefer myself some solid mercenaries work te this mess 'ere", the harpooner said.

"How are we supposed to fix this ship anyhow? The whole damn right half of this wreck is ripped open like a gutted fish!", a small fellow with a high fur cap and a long moustache complained.

"Oh, go to hell you weak, foolish, fearful..." While continuing to list pejorative adjectives, Mercer drew a pistol, quicker than Maya would have expected of the paunchy cook, and shot a dent in the harpooner's faceplate. The huge man collapsed and the freed cook immediately turned on Maya, holding his finger down on the trigger. The Siren shifted through the ringing shots, an easy feat, as they were all wildly off-target, and returned fire.

As did DeStepan, Burns and three of the adventurers.

Mercer staggered under the onslaught, but somewhere on his way he must have come across a very powerful shield, because he kept on shooting, while quickly withdrawing towards the ship. Then the harpooner got back on his feet. Blood was running from under his faceplate, but he roared and threw his lance. The massive, vicious harpoon finally broke the shield. The tip pierced Mercer's shoulder. A nova of electrical energy blasted outwards with the cook in the middle, but it was too far away to hurt anyone. Maya curled her left hand into a fist and space performed its little dance for her. Mercer was dragged back towards the crowd of mercenaries and died suspended in mid-air. When Maya released the corpse, the harpooner immediately went over to reclaim his weapon.

"Hank, are you okay?!", Torben cried.

"Been worse", the harpooner gnarled. "Bastard! And couldn't cook for shit."

"So, I take it you all want to sign up with the Crimson Raiders now?", Maya asked.

Some men immediately answered: "Aye", others merely nodded and one or two quietly slipped away. They wouldn't pose a problem, though, in contrast to Scarlett herself, wherever the hell she had hidden away. She would probably find out just by waiting for her.

"Alright then, I'm sure you didn't hoof it all the way from Wurmwater, so grab your stuff and we'll get out of here via Liars Berg's Fast Travel!", Maya continued, naturally taking charge of these men.

"Ma'am!", DeStepan spoke up shyly, "what about the guns?"

The Siren turned sharply and the Private staggered backwards, hastily covering his lips. "The guns have frankly slipped my mind. Thank you for reminding me, DeStepan. And don't worry - I don't even have a stapler with me."

"A stapler?", Burns asked bewildered.

"Never mind. Hey, Torben, come here! Did you find any capital weaponry on board this wreck while trying to repair it? If so, lead the way. We're going to need it."


	9. Chapter 9: Raid

Chapter 9: Raid

"You took your merry time", Lilith greeted Maya, as she strode into Raider's HQ. "And apparently you've jammed Sanctuary's Commerce Grid for at least a regular day. And you brought a bunch of mercenaries along, minus their captain."

"Caffeine", Maya demanded and dropped unceremoniously into a chair.

"Thank you for putting it that way." Lilith fished a package of coffee powder from the small galley and tossed it over. Her fellow Siren ripped it open and dipped the contents into her mouth without further ado. "Must have been a night of hard work."

"Don't mention it." As she had just acquired a crew of mercenaries who were eager to show their bought loyalty towards the Crimson Raiders, Maya had decided to just complete the salvage run properly. The wannabe-pirates were already pretty familiar with construction tools, so it hadn't taken them too long to dismantle the capital weaponry on board the wreck. It came down to eight heavy anti-ship guns, four AA-cannons, a number of mortars, Big Bertha and quite a stockpile of powerful surface-to-air missiles including fire-control radar for the bigger ones.

The tiring part had been to haul all those pieces of the deconstructed weapons, which didn't fit into a handheld SDU (read: the majority), to Liar's Berg and painstakingly feed every single one of them into the Commerce Grid. The Grid was one of the oldest pieces of Digistruct-technology on the planet and Scooter had once compared it to a mule: it was slow, it took some real effort to make it move in the right direction, but once on its track, it trudged on with incredible reliability.

"Scooter will love you for this job", Lilith continued, a teasing smile on her face.

"Scooter loves everything that isn't male, including his own sister", Maya retorted and licked the last remnants of coffee powder from her lips. The caffeine was already doing an admirable job, but it was a last-ditch effort. Even a Siren couldn't stay awake indefinitely. "Though, maybe I can squeeze a little monetary thank-you out of him. You know, like in the old days. When he was still managing to man all his garages himself and we weren't making crazy money by means of exporting Eridium and... bug-DNA."

"Give it a try. It might work. What did you do about Scarlett?"

"We tried to raise her on the ECHO and when that didn't work, we left a Surveyor at the Soaring Dragon. Maybe she'll come back. Looking at the greater picture, I don't think she's a major problem. I mean, she was trying to weld the holes in the Dragon shut, how desperate can you be? But on the small scale, I feel very satisfied about headhunting almost her entire crew. It's just... did you ever fight a Rakk Hive inside an enormous Sandworm? She still owes me at least a couple of teeth I would like to send out her mouth."

"But you don't reckon we should hunt her down."

"Nope. That would be a waste of resources and men and speaking of men, is there a chance that you might replace Noah Burns and Joseph DeStepan at Ferry Port? 'Cause these two truly did a decent job down there."

"Shouldn't be a problem. I..."

"Great, in that case, I'll be in my bunk." Maya forced herself out of the chair and made a beeline for the nearest cot. "Don't wake me unless something important happens. And when I'm talking about important, I'm talking about another Hyperion invasion, that scale."

"Go ahead", Lilith said smiling. "I'll be up and try to figure out a way to breach Control Core Angel. You've still got... twenty hours of night time left."

"That should definitely do the trick."

* * *

Hox awoke, when his Runner had already passed the metal walls protecting Ellie's Garage & Junkyard. Hastily he folded his legs back inside, which he had been dangling over the brim of the turret, put cushion and blanket back into his SDU and donned his gasmask, his goggles and his helmet.

The intercom crackled. "Test, Test, rise and shine!", Linda said.

The accelerating Runner blasted a stream of cold air in Hox' face, waking him up extremely quickly. "Test, Test, very funny."

"That's what the others think."

He sighed and did a quick 360° check, noticing several sneers and occasionally open laughter from other gunners and the boarders in the back of the technicals. He ignored them and checked his primary weapon, an AL-69 grenade launcher, crossbred with a couple of grenade-mods in order to deliver the appropriate ammunition for the enemy at hand. "Primary weapon check. Turret mobility check. Gunner check. All systems online. Ready to rock and roll, wherever we're going."

"High command green lit the raid on Convoy L5", Linda replied immediately. "We should be back in a couple of hours. Hopefully with some Rakk Ale to feast."

Hox nodded slowly and looked around. The raiding party consisted of ten Outrunners, five technicals with boarders in the cargo area and Gaspard's Monster. An impressive force, more than enough to deal with Convoy L5, which according to the scouts was barely six vehicles strong, two of them unarmed transporters. Actually, this was an overkill of biblical proportions, but that was what they were supposed to do: Intimidate the shit out of the Hodunks. It was the only language these people understood. Rhyme or reason or the fact that the Raiders could get almost limitless off-world supplies didn't bother Jimbo Hodunk the least and he who does not listen is consequentially the one who gets his ass handed to him.

"How long till engagement?", the gunner asked. Usually, Outrunners didn't need an independent intercom, but they didn't usually feature a closed, bulletproof cockpit either. They had made countless customizations, modifications and repairs over the ten years on mercenary road. Eventually they had earned themselves a permanent discount at Scooter's even before they had taken a contract with the Crimson Raiders.

"In the sense you're meaning it: twenty minutes at least. And in the sense you're not meaning it: never", Linda said sweetly and laughed.

"Oh no, all the years, all the kisses, all the sex... for naught", Hox muttered.

"You left your com on."

"I know. Do I need to fear reprisal for this comment?"

"Depends on the reprisal. I've had something in mind for the last couple of days, but that would require you to sleep in a place that differs from the turret."

"Could be arranged."

"In that case: You should be scared!"

"It just occurred to me, aren't we a tiny bit hypocritical, with us deliberately not using the official ECHOnet channels because they're jammed with so much unprofessional nonsense?"

Laughter mixed with static. "In a way we are, in a way we aren't. After all, _we_ aren't jamming anything with an on-board intercom."

"That's true." Hox straightened up and looked around. To the west Goose's Roost and the infamous Ramp Rock were rapidly appearing over the horizon, some rocky outcroppings dotted the seamlessly endless sands, Elpis stood bright and stoic in its geostationary orbit and illuminated the whole scenery.

"Beautiful night for such a thing!", Private McSantosh shouted from the turret of the nearest Outrunner and gave him the thumbs-up.

"Beautiful night", Hox agreed silently.

* * *

Mitchell Darsher was sitting behind the technical's turret, the only place where one was safe from the strong airstream, and fidgeted with the controls strapped to his forearms. He had donned his gear in a reasonable hurry and even though he had dumped a lot of the safety protocol over time (which wasn't very long to begin with), there were still some things he preferred to check on before seeing combat.

The rest of the cargo area was crammed with six other men, all of them Slabs who had managed to talk Harker into repainting his technical, so it fit the Clan colors. Brick had picked the sanest and brightest of his men to support the operations in the Dust and neither criterion was telling much, but so far, it worked great. All the boarders were bandits; it was the only sensible thing to do. No mercenary and not even the dyed-in-the-wool revolutionaries from the first generation of Crimson Raiders were even considering to board a moving vehicle at full speed. The bandits didn't have these restraints.

In some, strange way, Mitch admired them. Given a pen and paper they'd probably eat the paper and pop someone's eyeball with the pen, but they were not stupid. They possessed the shrewd, intuitive intellect of people who had stood up to an incredibly hostile planet for years. These guys knew what they needed to survive and they did everything necessary to get it. If survival required drinking Stalker piss, cutting steaks out of a living, sleeping Rakk Hive or taking everything from some old, helpless miner, so be it. Do or die, thus was the policy of Pandora and there were lots of people who couldn't handle these realities one way or another. The Slabs were brutal, trigger-happy and immoral, but given the fact that they lived and were able to form any sort of society, they were winners, dancing on a tightrope high above two chasms called death and insanity.

"Alright, boys!", Harker shouted, his booming voice carried from the cab over to the holding area. He was a big man with a strong dislike of brakes. "We should see them soon. How's our engineer?"

"Ready to rock!", Mitch reported.

"Hasn't puked yet", a Slab by the name of Scarbelly added and his companions broke into throaty laughter.

"Still deciding who to hit", Mitch retorted, causing even more raucous guffaw. It was true, though. The first time he had ridden in the cargo area of a technical, he had thrown up violently and although Harker's driving wasn't as much to blame as the little stupid bet about an old Atlas ration, the crew hadn't stopped teasing ever since.

"Right then, getting serious now!", Harker announced.

"Duh", someone commented. "I thought the fun was about to begin. Wasn't it, Shotty?"

"Quiet on the peanut gallery. We've got visuals!"

"Which means, we can see them", Mitch translated quickly, earning a collective: "Aha!", from the Slabs.

* * *

"Alright, boys, Convoy L5 at the ten position, repeat, ten position", Sergeant Masha Wheatgrinder announced into her ECHO. "Four technicals, two transporters. Moving away from us. Harker, Penrose, you take the left transport. Bracundo, Van Heerlen, right transport. Left flank Outrunners, take care of the aft security, right flank move up and intercept the front security. Gaspard, move up with them and block the transports. Give them a couple of shots across the bow, if they don't get the notion immediately. Over."

Just a second later she was slammed into her seat, as Waddell activated the booster, flooding the engine with a surplus of fuel and half a can of nitro. The rest of the fleet followed suit, closing in for the kill.

Even if the experience of a whooping three-g acceleration was momentarily causing her to grey-out, Masha still focused on the approaching convoy. L5. The designation simply meant, that it was the fifth convoy Loggins had spotted.

"Escort vehicles turning around for defense", she said through gritted teeth. "Transporters... stopped. Repeat, the transporters stopped. And now... the escorts are collecting the drivers from the transports."

"You've got to be shitting me!", Van Heerlen chimed in via ECHO.

"They run like scared little puppies!", Waddell chuckled next to her.

"Did ya see that? They drive away! They frigging drive away!" That was Harker. He could hardly make himself heard over the Slabs in his vehicle hauling abuse at the fleeing Hodunk vehicles.

"Sarge, this is strange", Corporal Derleth added, from his Outrunner on the left flank.

"Ha, these assholes finally learned their lesson, didn't they?!", Gaspard boomed, almost audible without the ECHO, as his Monster was pretty close to Masha's command-technical.

"Everyone, stay off the ECHOnet, unless you've something important to say!", she roared.

"Copy", Linda replied nonchalantly and for a moment Masha was really grateful to have at least some professionals with her on this raid. The former Atlas soldiers could easily function as an efficient, military force, but the bandits, adventurers and even some of the freelance mercenaries lacked discipline. Poor old organized, purposeful Roland would turn in his unknown grave, if he'd had to hear all the chatter and nonsense tarnishing the ECHO-frequencies.

The Outrunners had already reached the abandoned transports and circled them carefully. "They left the doors open!", Derleth announced.

"No other life forms aboard", Private Nelbert added from the turret of another Outrunner. "The only thing showing up on thermal imaging are the engines."

"No one enters these things", Masha ordered. "Harker, Bracundo, send your engineers in. I want them to check these transporters thoroughly. They're possibly mined."

"Sarge, I know this looks like a trap", Gaspard chimed in, "but did it ever occur to you that the Hodunks aren't the brightest lamps in the shuttle cockpit?"

"I'm not taking unnecessary risks." While the technical slowly rolled to a halt, she switched the radio device on her ECHO off and send a call back to Ellie's Garage. She shared Gaspard's opinion on the majority of the Hodunks, but she was not going to underestimate the duo at the head of the Clan.

Ellie picked up almost immediately. "Hello there, sweetie! How is your raid going?"

"Surprisingly peaceful. Get Loggins airborne and send him to our coordinates. Something strange is going on here. I really want some air recon."

"Something strange? You're not telling me these morons actually conceived a plan of sorts? When we used to live with them, I remember them being too stupid..."

"Air recon. Now."

"Whoops, sorry. I'm on my way!"

* * *

Mitch knew a thing or two about explosives. After all, he had worked for Torgue, before joining the Raiders. He had never booby-trapped a vehicle, of course, but that wasn't saying he couldn't have.

The engineer quickly checked and double checked the critical locations, where he would have planted a bomb, then he checked every nook where a bomb could possibly hide from plain view and eventually turned up empty handed. The Cara-Van was clean. At least the interior.

"Hey, folks, I need one of you to check the underbody", he announced, turning to his crewmates.

"Why's that?", Scarbelly asked defensively.

"I don't fit under there", Mitch explained, pointing to his metallic backpack which housed all the SDUs necessary to digistruct his exo-skeleton and assorted weaponry.

"Well, deploy your little suit then and lift the fucking car up", another bandit suggested.

Mitch shook his head patiently. "I don't have indefinite juice for the... suit. I really don't want to waste it unnecessarily."

"Alright, alright." A scrawny guy who Mitch only knew by the name of Spider, grabbed a flashlight from his SDU and crawled under the Cara-Van. "What exactly am I looking for?"

"Any blinking lights?"

"None that I see. It's all quite plain down here. Hard to hide something."

"Look around the axles. Behind the wheels. And while you're at it, check the exhaust vent."

"Alright. Come out, come out, little bomb, wherever you are!"

But a minute later Spider shouted: "Clear!", and his comrades dragged him out from under the car by his feet.

"Clear!", Mitch conveyed the message to Sergeant Wheatgrinder.

"Ah, Hodunks!" Scarbelly lifted his mask high enough to spit in the dirt. "They've always been cowards and drunken sister-fuckers, haven't they been, boys? 'Course they would eventually run."

"Slabs!", someone shouted excitedly.

"We slap 'em well an' hard!", the other bandits roared in unison. Then they laughed and exchanged high-fives with each other and Mitch. Was it a bad sign that he felt good about it? But then again, he had volunteered for the Horde of Horrors. Who was he to judge?

* * *

Loggins' Copter rose high over the nightly desert, until it was out of reach of anything but a long range SAM. The stars seemed to be close enough to reach for them and Elpis seemed to be close enough to crash straight into.

The pilot did a quick system check. Routine. On the ground, he was a nobody, but in the air, no one was able to hold a candle to him. With lots of stolen Hyperion hardware crammed into his bird, Loggins was the eyes and ears of the Crimson Raiders during every bigger operation. Furthermore, he had his nose-machinegun, two rocket pods and four Surveyor drones, fastened in the benches for paratroopers, if the situation called for some mass destruction.  
All the systems proved to be fine and working and Loggins sped off towards the coordinates Miss Ellie had given him. Radar and cameras provided him with a perfect view of the landscape more than two kilometers below him, for miles and miles. Additionally, the sensors were picking up any radio traffic from Hero's Pass to Three Horns, analyzing it, and playing it out loud if a certain number of key words was uttered. Technology was amazing.

Then the computer gave the first warning: It had picked up an unidentified vehicle, or more specifically, a heat source that fitted a vehicle. Loggins flicked a number of switches to get a hologram of the problem. Even before it came to life, the computer warned him about three other vehicles. Steering the bird with one hand, the pilot enlarged the scale of the hologram and the instruments complied, showing him a perfect simulation of the Dust with four bandit technicals speeding through the sand. They were going the same way as Loggins.

Hm. That was a problem.

Quickly, he activated the radio. "Ground Dust, Ground Dust, this is Gods Eye. Be advised, four enemy vehicles approaching from the east. ETA ten minutes."

"We copy, thank you, Gods Eye", Sergeant Wheatgrinder replied.

Loggins passed over the four technicals, when the computer more or less exploded with alerts. He already had a hologram up and running, so he only had to move the camera. What he saw felt like a punch in the stomach. "Ground Dust, saddle up and get out of there at once. I advise you to leave the transports behind. Move out to the north."

"Gods Eye, keep calm, we can handle four vehicles."

"I don't doubt it. But by now I count fifteen." A gut feeling made Loggins veer off to the south, powering up the engines until they had reached maximum speed. For a second the sensors reported nothing of interest, then the alerts went flashing again. "Ground Dust, I have spotted another force of twenty vehicles moving in from the south. I repeat, get the hell out of there." The alerts changed in shape and color. "Oh, and they've got three Copters with them, too. I'm off for a little dog-fight. Over and out."


	10. Chapter 10: Retreat

Chapter 10: Retreat

"Hey! What are you doing there?!", Private McSantosh shouted, hanging halfway out of his turret.

Hox blinked in surprise and swiveled his own turret around to face the Crimson Raider. "Sulking because I didn't see any action, mostly."

"No, I mean your little handiwork."

"Oh that." Hox lifted the metal file and the lump of steel he had been working with in an almost apologetic gesture. "Just a little project of mine. I'm planning to file myself a little Stalker here. Already got a Skag, a Bullymong, a Rakk and a... well, it's supposed to be a Rakk-Hive, but it's mostly just hideous, first thing I ever did."

"Little Pandoran Zoo", McSantosh said, smiling. "Must take a hell of a long time to finish one."

"'Course, but it's very relaxing."

"So, you make them for your wife?"

"We ain't married", Hox stated with absolutely no hesitation.

McSantosh looked a bit taken aback. "Whoa, keep calm. It's just that..."

"I know. Perfectly reasonable to assume, too."

"So... you just didn't make it official, didn't you?"

Hox laughed and carefully got back to work. "Official. Are you kidding me? This is the borderest of border-planets. Official comes here to die." He shook his head, chuckling. This wasn't his only misgiving about marriage, though. The whole concept seemed inappropriate for the relationship he shared with Linda. They weren't just two people who loved, respected and trusted each other. The Outrunner had welded them together in an almost surreal way. In the strictest sense of the word, one couldn't go on without the other: the driver relied on the gunner to do the majority of the fighting and to do it well, the gunner relied on the driver to keep them moving and to dodge whatever the world threw at them. And they had perfected this reliance and trust to the point where they simply couldn't be just professionals anymore and sewed their hammocks together.

"Boys, saddle up, we're getting out of here!", Wheatgrinder shouted. "And be quick about it."

"One day I'll force her at gunpoint to drop this 'boys' at the start of every other order", Linda complained.

"Feminist. What's going on?", Hox inquired.

He could almost picture Linda shrugging down in the cockpit. "Don't know."

"Gunners, be alert! Enemies approaching from east and south! We're heading north! If there's anything light enough from the transports to carry, take it, but we're leaving the Vans behind."

"Holy Crawmerax, how many enemies are we talking about?", Hox shouted and slapped his hands on the turret's brim in frustration.

"I'll ask", Linda proposed and went offline for a split second. When she came back on, she had slipped into the laconic inflection he knew as her 'battle voice': "Thirty five, as far as we know."

"Well, fuck me thrice and then once more", Hox cursed and pointed his launcher due south.

"I'd like to, but now is really not the right moment", Linda replied dryly.

* * *

Masha stood in the cab of her technical, making sure that everyone had climbed back aboard his or her vehicle, before she tapped Waddell on the shoulder and he started the engine. Elegantly the Sergeant slipped back into her seat.

"Where are we going?", Waddell demanded, as the party took positions: the Monster as a blockade runner in front, the command-technical right behind him, the technicals of Bracundo and Van Heerlen on its flank and slightly in front of them, the technicals of Harker and Penrose bringing up the rear, and the Outrunners forming a loose circle around them with five on each flank.

Masha clipped her ECHO to the dashboard. "Gods Eye, Gods Eye, this is Ground Dust, do you copy, over?"

Static.

"Gods Eye, Gods Eye, this is Ground Dust, please report, over."

Nothing. Masha wasn't too worried about Loggins. The guy could easily hold his own against three Copters and the Hodunk cars weren't equipped for a moving target more than two kilometers high in the air. But still, Masha's party was running blindly into most probably unfriendly territory.

"Eyes right!", Private Nelbert radioed.

"Here we go!", Gaspard shouted excitedly.

"Eyes south!", Corporal Derleth announced. "Enemy technicals, firing boosters now."

Masha thought desperately about a place they could go. The Runners could safely speed away, but the Monster and the trucks weren't fast enough for that. The Hodunks had cut them off from Ellie's Garage and the next base was in the Blight. That would require them to drive for at least ten hours straight, even with regular usage of the booster. Plus, given the circumstances, Masha didn't like the thought of the narrow gorge leading through the mountains to the Ashes. However, to the north there was nothing but sand and rocks and the occasional Spiderant. The Hodunks had set up camp in Oasis too, so...

Hold a second.

"Surprise Four, Surprise Four, this is Ground Dust, do you copy, over."

A gut wrenching second passed. Behind her, the Outrunners opened up on the approaching enemies, providing suppressive fire.

"Ground Dust, we hear you. Why are you calling us now? Surprise Four over."

"We need your coordinates. Rally your men and prepare for battle, we're bringing a little party."

"Copy that, Ground Dust. You'll receive the data soon. What kind of party?"

Masha paused a second, until her ECHO indicated an incoming data pack. "Alright, we received your transmission and we'll head for your position straight away. Be alert, we're being followed by at least thirty-five vehicles."

"Exciting progress. I thought it was far beyond them. But they sprang a trap."

"How about you? Are you ready for a fight?"

"We'll be when you come. Guess the big raid's in hard luck. Now it's nullified."

"Yeah, probably. See you in half an hour at least. Over and out." Masha quickly sent the new course to all the drivers in the raiding party. Half an hour was still pretty long, especially while making a fighting retreat. The Sergeant stood to get a better image of what was going on, just in time to catch all hell breaking loose on the rearguard.

* * *

"Cover!", Mitch shouted as the explosive barrel came straight for him and he had a split second to realize that there _was_ no adequate cover in the back of the technical, before the explosion sent him flying like a ragdoll. Star dotted sky, dark ground and something ablaze were rapidly changing positions in front of his eyes, he felt weightless and then reality hit him with the equivalent of a brick wall.

The engineer ploughed through the sand, spun over a couple of times and came to rest prone in the dirt. All sorts of pain hit him simultaneously, including what he suspected to be some broken ribs. His arms and legs burned, scratched open by unyielding sand, but he could move and staggered to his feet, disoriented and dazed.

He was greeted by blazing headlights, maniacal laughter and the roar of an engine, as a technical raced straight towards him.

Mitch reacted instinctively. _Emergency deploy._ With the press of a button his exo-skeleton materialized around him, quick and efficient and only amplifying the pain in his limbs. He performed a standing jump and activated the boosters, which catapulted him high in the air... high enough for the technical to pass below him safely.

He landed smoothly on his feet and took the second to close the roll cages over his chest. His ribs were planning murder and revolt because of this, but now he couldn't be removed from the exo-skeleton without a substantial amount of force at precisely the right angle

The next technical was already heading for him, not even firing the machine gun. They just wanted to run him over.

Mitch pushed some more buttons and an industrial laser appeared from the backpack, looking straight over his right shoulder. Another little push and a beam of pure heat and coherent light connected the engineer and the approaching car.

The problem about a constantly firing laser was the aim. Mitch had to stand perfectly still, but that was nigh impossible given the shrieking pain in his arms and legs. He didn't manage to home in on the driver, although he certainly blinded him and accidentally burned a hole in the gunners forehead, so instead he focused on the car itself. The laser was strong, even if moved about a bit, it could chew through the armor plating of the hood and once that was gone, he would direct a couple thousand kilojoules straight at the motor, hopefully, before the car was close enough to...

It became too hot. Literally. Mitch killed the laser and made another jump, somersaulting over the technical. He landed, ready to face the next one, but there was just empty desert. Quickly he spun around and send a number of electrical charges after the technical. One bandit riding in the cargo area of the car got struck and twitched epileptically, when the electricity overloaded his system.

And then they were gone, a cloud of dust and shots and explosions disappearing into the desert, far out of reach.

Mitch took a deep breath and sat down, which was an awkward thing to do in his suit. Checking the perimeter again, he quickly deconstructed the exo-skeleton and got a med-kit from his SDU. His arms and legs were scratched and bleeding and a lot of sand was stuck in the wounds. He used up an entire bottle of water to wash his wounds adequately, before treating himself with and Instant-Health. Injecting stem-cells to treat a dirty wound posed a problem: The wound would still close perfectly, but the stem-cells didn't care if there was sand or leaves or shrapnel in the way and grew the flesh around these impurities. And it was all but certain that this dirt would cause infection and festering, as it was lodged inside the very muscles. No thank you.

Once his arms and legs were fine and even his ribs made some agreeable terms of surrender, Mitch took stock. He had his suit, an SDU worth of rations and water (Ellie had advised the lot of them to carry at least fifty liters, wherever they went, while in the Dust) and he had absolutely no clue, where he was.  
He tried to raise Sarge Wheatgrinder on his private ECHO, but she was out of reach and he didn't want to distract her with a call. Next, he tried Loggins and actually got a quick response: "Get out of my channel, ham!" Clearly, the rest of the party was still kicking and busy, but for him the fight was over.

Mitch redeployed his exo-skeleton and send a voice-message to Ellie's Garage: "Hi there, this is Mitchell Darsher, I've fallen off Sergeant Wheatgrinder's raiding party and I'm alone in the desert, at the time. Don't worry about me, I'm fine, I'm fine... Just, when the ruckus is over, I'd be happy if you could send someone to pick me up. There are some high mesas in the distance, I'll travel there, easy landmark, so... yeah, just, send someone, would be nice. Thanks in advance, over."

Using his boosters, Mitchell started to move in the direction of the mesas like a man on the moon: In long, purposeful jumps.

* * *

A lot of things were happening simultaneously, none of them good, except for the sudden decrease in radio usage. Sharing opinions and battle cries with everyone in the raiding party had taken a backseat to fighting off Hodunks.

Masha was busy keeping up with all that was going on, still standing upright in the cab of her technical. So far, the rearguard had been mauled the hardest. Harker's technical had been on fire, briefly, and the cargo area had been blasted out into the desert, together with two Slabs and the engineer. Penrose had reported five wounded in his technical, himself included. The enemy had failed to overtake them, thanks to the firepower of the Monster, but the Runners on the right flank had been fighting since the bandits caught up to them. Six broken ribs didn't keep Private Nelbert from shooting his machinegun, though his driver was urgently asking for a replacement gunner. One Runner up the line, driver Harry Swopolis was swerving around, because blood from a head wound was constantly messing with his eyesight. Another driver had reported in a cool, disbelieving voice that the tip of his pinkie had been shot off. Several Outrunners from the left flank had already drifted aft or right, in order to support their comrades.

Masha's mind was spinning like space debris. Her first order of business was to evacuate Harker's technical. It was already starting to fall back, millimeter by millimeter. It probably wouldn't take kindly to the next booster.

"Harker, can you hear me?!"

"Ah, loud and clear, Sergeant."

"What's your status."

Harker told her in a few, chosen, very adult words.

"Okay." She looked around, trying to figure something out. "Okay." Leading from the front was a great concept, but right now she had the feeling someone in a big control room with lots of monitors, a clear picture of this messy situation and an ordinary amount of adrenaline in his system would have been better qualified to make decisions on the battlefield.

"Two enemies hard-crashed", Derleth said. "One of them was driving as if he was blind."

"Confirmed!", Linda piped in. "Both flipped over."

Well, not all news is bad news. "Harker, can all of your men move?"

"You kidding? Except me and Hanna in the turret, they're all band..."

"Yes or no."

"Erm, yes."

"They can climb?"

"You guys can climb? Yes, seems to be the consent."

"Derleth, get closer to Harker's technical. His men shall climb over onto your vehicle; ferry them over to me or Van Heerlen. Try to get all at once. Zayit, Orpheus, move your Runners over there to provide cover fire. And Bracundo, send one of your boarders to relieve Private Nelbert. Leave him in the turret for now. It's gonna get crowded, but they'll just have to make do."

"Copy", Derleth replied. "Wonderful."

"I'll do my best", Bracundo confirmed.

"This is heaps fun. Heaps and heaps fun", Orpheus muttered, but his Runner was already moving into position.

Masha glanced down at her dashboard. The booster would be ready for re-use in a matter of minutes. But they needed to evacuate Harker's limping technical, before they could use it. Damn, damn, damn.

At this point, every other party member was wounded or unaccounted for.

* * *

Hox was providing cover fire while Derleth moved in to perform the most insane rescue mission the mercenary had ever seen, even after a long and colorful career on Pandora. And even more astonishing, Harker and his crew went along with it without batting an eye. At full speed they jumped from the cargo area of the technical over to the Outrunner, clinging to the vehicle like lice to a bullymong.

McSantosh was basically out of the fight. He fired his machinegun sporadically, but he was busy reaching out to grab the men changing vehicle, especially the wounded. So it was up to Hox to do the work of two gunners, painting a firm line of impacts in the sand, a line the Hodunks shouldn't dare to cross. In order to cover more ground in one shot, he had already switched to MIRV-grenades, but his finger was constantly hovering over the switch to change ammo. MIRVs were a meat grinder, but they couldn't pierce armor.

Zayit and Orpheus were coming around from the left flank, supporting the rear and for some illogical reason, Hox grew irritated by their appearance. Their turret gunners unleashed a hail of bullets and grenades, but of course they didn't have his accuracy. Their cover fire kept the Hodunks at bay, for sure, but it was sloppy and wasteful and Hox knew that he shouldn't bother, because he was a professional who literally lived in his car, and still, seeing the others' performance irked him.

He vented his anger at the Hodunks, gripping the handles of his launcher harder, working the turret rotation with the pedals. Each ear shattering explosion filled him with grim delight.

"Harker out for good!", Linda relayed a message from the radio.

Hox spared a glance to his left and immediately regretted it. Derleth sped away and his Runner was covered in bleeding, screaming and for the majority still shooting people who held on for dear life. Meanwhile Harker's technical rolled on for a few more moments, before the scuttle charges activated. The massive truck made a perfect barrel roll and flipped over on its side. One of the bandit cars evaded the burning wreck by a whisker.

The two Outrunners which had come aft to help during the evacuation, were speeding up in order to reclaim their positions closer to the front. Until Derleth returned, Hox was more or less on his own.

An enemy driver decided to give it a try and fired his booster. What he probably thought to be a cunning evasive maneuver seemed to Hox like a drunkard driving in the most exaggerated zigzag pattern of all time. The gunner switched ammunition without missing a shot, as the enemy came within reach and the Hodunk truck was greeted by an armor piercing acidic grenade to the bonnet. It exploded on impact, sending shrapnel and lots and lots of caustic chemicals straight into the motor. The secondary blast of a detonating engine was a thoroughly delightful sight for the mercenary.

Just then a second technical rushed in from the right, aiming to ram them. Hox swiveled the turret around and the truck veered away, just when a third enemy attacked from the left.

He was getting overrun!

"Incoming right! Evade!", Hox shouted into the intercom and ducked, as the truck bore straight down on them, shooting giant saw-blades as it went. Saw-blades! Grenades, bullets, missiles, fine! But coming under saw-blade-fire always made his spine tingle.

Linda kept her cool and dodged the enemy easily with a quick turn of the wheel. The truck sped past them, without slowing down, but the second the driver noticed his prey had eluded him, he turned sharply... and something strange happened.

The front of the Hodunk car dove into the sand as if it had liquefied. The rear was catapulted into the air and sent the boarders flying. Almost simultaneously the sand came alive around the crashed truck, as dozens of Spiderants dug themselves from the ground, in order to investigate who had broken into their nest.

"Booster!", Linda said.

The acceleration slammed Hox against the walls of his turret. A quick look around, the whole raiding party was dashing away, leaving the Hodunks temporarily behind.

Just then, he noticed something else: A saw-blade was stuck in the side of the barrel of his launcher, almost at a square angle. Oh...

He needed the weapon and he needed it in working condition. The saw-blade had to go. Lacking other spontaneous ideas, Hox grabbed a crow bar from his SDU and started whacking away at the saw-blade. After three mighty blows, the thing came actually free. A mere second later, the muzzle and the better part of the barrel followed suit.

Hox blinked in disbelief. He was a weapon expert out of necessity and he knew that sawing off the barrel was a bad idea in basically every case. Lower accuracy, lower reach and with today's high-tech weaponry it was particularly stupid. But given the circumstances, he had to work with what he got. The Hodunks were already catching up once more.

For safety reasons, Hox switched ammunition to blanks, said a prayer and fired. The impact was horribly off target; closer to the vehicle than usual and several meters to the left. He fired some more rounds, just to get a feeling for the new properties of his launcher. It didn't blow up and the spread was somewhat predictable. Gritting his teeth, Hox went back to live ammunition.

"What happened to you?!", McSantosh yelled over and only then did Hox notice that they were all back in formation, minus a technical. Derleth' Runner was covered in bloodstains, a lot of them handprints, where Harker's crew had held on.

"Caught a saw-blade to the main weapon", Hox said, switching his com on, so Linda could hear him as well.

"Operational?", Linda demanded.

"Yep."

Over in the next Runner, McSantosh started to laugh hysterically.

"Buck up!", Hox roared.

"Sure, buddy", the Raider replied, snickering. "It's just... your operating Pandora's very first sawed-off grenade-launcher."

Hox contemplated whether or not he should offer his broken weapon to the Private, but then the first Hodunks caught up and he was too busy aiming.


	11. Chapter 11: Surprise

Chapter 11: Surprise

Twenty minutes into the fight, an exploding barrel went up directly in front of the command technical. Masha remained unscathed by some miracle or another. Waddell was hit by numerous bits of shrapnel into the chest, abdomen and arm and the latter seemed to have severed a nerve or something, because he was completely unable to move the limb afterwards. Without inflicting to much pain on the wounded driver, they had switched places and now, on top of her other responsibilities, Masha was driving a car with six people on board, namely three wounded men from Harker's technical, the gunner, Waddell and herself.

She kept a record of enemies taken out of the fight. Two had hard-crashed early on, one had driven into a Spiderant nest, Hox had shot down two by now, the second one with his sawed-off launcher, Gaspard had two, Nelbert had one, Truman had one, with his bow LMG, amazingly, Penrose crew had one. The suppression fire had probably claimed a bandit's life or twenty, but they couldn't be sure about that and it was the vehicles that counted. They were still outnumbered.

The raiding party, meanwhile, had lost Harker's technical and an Outrunner: driver Stan Grawicz had caught a bullet to the head, denying him any chance to use an Instant Health, and in his dying moment he must have yanked the wheel around, because his car had turned violently to the right and left sight. Masha hadn't heard from the gunner yet, though there was a slim chance that he was still alive. Penrose had a dead man on board, they were still missing three people who had been blown off Harker's truck and they had just cracked the three quarters mark of people in the party being wounded.

They had had to restructure on the run. Gaspard was still up front, in order to thwart enemy attempts to encircle them, the technicals were right behind him, the Outrunners formed a ragged half-circle around the rear, everyone was staying relatively close together, so they could bundle their firepower and give the Hodunks a taste of every turret in the party. The downside was an increased vulnerability to explosions, but if the enemy had something more powerful than barrels, they had yet to use it. At first, Masha had tried to keep Bracundo's and her own technical close to the Monster, as designated transporters for wounded, but as the fight wore on, it turned out to be a useless idea: There were simply too many wounded to fit in two technicals, even if they huddled close together, and the people in the Outrunners could not be missed on the line. If one of them got shot, he or she would still have to drive or dish out. Nelbert was the only exception; after the last use of the booster, they had bought just enough time to transfer the Private to Bracundo's technical and replace him with a Slab.

The radio crackled: "Ground Dust, this is Gods Eye, you're still there?"

Masha heaved a sigh of relief. "Yeah, we're rather hard to kill. Do you have visuals on us?"

"Affirmative! I've mapped your course to Surprise Four, they are moving towards you as we speak. There is a wadi opening up at Gaspard's two position, that's where they're hiding."

"Copy that! Gaspard, you're listening?"

"Yep."

"Lead the way." As nice as it was to have air support once again, Masha was a little anxious to move into a dry valley. She understood, why Surprise Four had chosen to position themselves there, and yet there would be a traffic jam of sorts once they entered. And with murderous Hodunks in hot pursuit they couldn't pull a stunt like that.

"How far into the valley, until we reach them?"

"Half a kilometer. The wadi is rather wide, but the entrance can only be passed by... three vehicles side by side. It's the only way in, the walls are bedrock and too steep to drive down. Be advised, once you're inside the wadi, you will receive sniper support wherever needed."

Masha nodded and barely dodged another barrel. Now to avoiding a snarl-up.

The Monster was the strongest vehicle in both regards to firepower and armor, furthermore it was the slowest one, so the others could easily overtake it and leave it to defend the rear. Masha decided to add the technicals of Van Heerlen and herself to the rearguard, as they were the least damaged. Penrose and Bracundo with all their wounded should go in first, then the Runners, the fastest cars, which meant they could hold the line a little longer, before they overtook the rearguard and slipped through the bottleneck. They still needed to keep the Hodunks at bay.

"Gods Eye, can I have a strafing run from you, before we move into the valley? Just to buy us a little more time?"

"Ah, negative, negative. I've deployed all my Surveyors and I've been hit myself. Can't effectively maneuver, but I can still stay aloft."

So much for air support.

She started giving detailed orders. First of all, no one was to break formation until the valley was within a reasonable reach. Entering the wadi suddenly became a delicate balancing act of keeping as much firepower together as long as possible without ending up with a big traffic jam at the entrance. The last Outrunners to leave would have to be the best shots, in order to maintain a precise, long range cover fire. Loggins was feeding her data all the while, which was an enormous relief. The pilot had the time and equipment to acquire accurate distances and align them with the speed and course of the ground forces, where Masha would have been left to guess everything by eyesight.

The valley was plainly visible now. The desert seemed to cave in, two otherwise unsuspicious hills flanked the ramp downwards. It was covered in loose sand and steep, but according to Loggins' ground radar the cars would be able to move down there without sliding or getting stuck.

"Go!", the Sergeant ordered.

Bracundo and Penrose floored it, overtook Gaspard and shot down the ramp. The Outrunners followed, though not as organized and graceful as Masha would have liked. She yelled into her ECHO to prevent crashes and keep people from blocking the bottleneck. "Zayit, brake! Linda goes first! Derleth, hold your fucking position! Truman, you go on the right side, right, right, not left!"

Two Outrunners slammed into each other, the gunners shouting wildly at their drivers. Linda weaseled her way past them and down the slope, running on two wheels for a second. Penrose reported visual contact with Surprise Four. As the field cleared, Gaspard and his gunner opened up with everything they had, including two machineguns at the rear, adding a third car to their kill list.

And then another Hodunk bore down on Masha from the left and hurled his barrel. Instinctively she accelerated, but the missile hit them nonetheless. The technical was sturdy enough not to topple, but it rocked right out of her control. Waddell might have been able to keep the car on track, but he lay wheezing in the passenger's seat and the technical swung off to the left, past the ramp. Masha's hands reacted a split second before her brain and she steered clear right.

The technical went over the edge of the wadi with enormous speed.

"Hold fast!", Masha shouted.

Loggins had been right: The ramp was very steep, the valley was surprisingly wide and it got deep quickly. The technical fell four meters at the least and its momentum carried it halfway across the wadi, before it hit the ground with a vengeance. The suspensions were put to the test brutally. The wounded in the back were slammed against the cockpit and screamed in pain and surprise, which was a good sign considering the barrel's explosion hadn't killed them. The gunner was almost yanked from his turret. Waddell, dazed as he was, had wedged himself in a way that let him survive the shock without even moving. Masha crashed into the steering wheel and her left knee hit the dashboard from below with enough force to make it explode with pain.

"Sarge! You're alright?!", Derleth cried.

"Holy burning shit! You just jumped over me! Awesome!", Gaspard yelled.

"Ground Dust, enemies closing in from behind, drive on, if you can! Do you request evac, repeat, do you request evac?", Loggins asked, but his voice was shaking, as if he was about to panic. As usual.

"Drive, damn it!", Waddell croaked and reached over to turn the wheel.

Masha realized that she still had her right foot on the gas.

"Incoming left!", the gunner reported groggily.

A hard fight against inertia, impulse and other nasty ingredients of dynamics later, Masha had the technical back on course, at least driving in the right direction now. Her knee was ravaging pain and below it was a horrible, counterintuitive deadweight: Her eyes told her she still had a lower leg and a foot, but she could feel neither. She was dangerously far away from the rearguard and already a new enemy was coming towards her and apparently her gunner was in no shape to return fire. She saw the Monster and Van Heerlen's technical try to put up a suppressive fire without hitting her, but they were too far away, while bullets from the Hodunk's machinegun were already ricocheting off the sides of her truck...

And then, in quick succession, eight sharp cracks pierced the all in all amazingly loud night. Masha never saw the bullets, but she saw the driver and gunner of the Hodunk truck go limp and the sparks on the bonnet, before it breached and a last well placed shot that made the engine explode.

Sniper cover.

"Don't slow down!", Waddell advised.

"Why?", Masha responded. She was surprised by her own calm.

"The way you move your left leg, you can't change gears. Go below 80 and you kill the engine. And we don't want that."

"We def'nitely don't want that", someone from the cargo area agreed meekly.

The gunner was back in shape and the heavy thumping of his machinegun continued. Masha kept one eye on the speedometer and another on the way ahead. She was seriously annoyed that Gaspard and Van Heerlen were the only ones still guarding the rear, the others, as far as she could see, were dashing deeper into the valley. For a moment she couldn't help but think of them as rats abandoning the ship: Without the need to hold formation, and thereby stick with the Monster's inability to outrun the Hodunks, they went on their merry way. And then Surprise Four swooped in from behind a sharp turn in the valley and Masha corrected her allegory: The rats had actually embarked the ship.

Behind her, the Hodunks came to a screeching halt.

"I'd give a bar of Eridium to hear their radio-chatter right now", Waddell quipped.

An enormous, rust-colored hovercraft moved down the valley. The crew had removed the masts, in order to keep a low profile, but the massive hulk was intimidating enough, splattered with blood and the green goo of sandworms, sandblasted, beaten and way, way bigger than any car. The thrusters were powered down, so the keel was almost touching the ground, threatening to crush everything within its path. The deck, looming several meters overhead, was lined with heavy weaponry, machineguns, harpoons and rocket launchers, apparently ripped from sand-skiffs or technicals and a lot of them opened up on the Hodunks.

It was the _Buccaneers Bacchanal_.

And it did precisely what they had always intended it to do: It scared the piss out of the Hodunks. Those who had ventured too far into the valley were shredded by the _Bacchanal's_ cannonade, the rest turned as fast as they could and headed the way they had come. One car hard-crashed, trying to leave the wadi and came to a rest on its roof.

The raiding party had stopped in the hovercraft's backwash and was restructuring. Masha passed the ship by on the starboard side, finally noticing a thin, black-clad figure who stood in front of the _Bacchanal_ as if the ship was unneeded backup, while he continued to fire his sniper rifle. The Sergeant lifted her hand in a feeble salute and the Vault Hunter flashed her a red smiley on his faceplate. She heard the gunner and the wounded in the back cheer the crew up on the deck and Zero down on the ground, but neither she nor Waddell were in any mood for celebrations yet. Once she had cleared the _Bacchanal_ , she finally let go of the gas and stepped on the brake. The gear box made some delightfully dreadful sounds and the engine stalled within seconds.

Then, she just sat there. She inspected her left leg, pinched her thigh and tried to remove her boot, but everything below her knee was wobbly and non-responding. There was chit-chat on the radio that she didn't listen to. The cockpit was smeared with blood, mostly from Waddell's numerous wounds. Masha whipped off her mask and took a deep breath, the air was cool and tasted, of sand and dust, of fuel, rust and, courtesy to the _Bacchanal's_ thrusters, ozone. Her sweaty hair stuck to her head in the most unsightly ways.

"Well... we're still alive", Waddell said matter-of-factly.

"So we are", Masha agreed and then the first medic came jogging from the hovercraft.

* * *

Hox slumped back in his turret, once the Outrunner stopped. He watched with delight as the Hodunks fled the valley, faced with the firepower and utter awesomeness of the _Bacchanal_. He saw Raiders up on the quarterdeck, two sand-skiffs in the aft hangar and, God be his witness, a Vault Hunter, standing in front of the ship. Despite the general mayhem, the cracks of his sniper rifle were clearly audible and each one told of at least one dead Hodunk.

Sergeant Wheatgrinder was the last to stop in the unorganized parking lot behind the ship. The screeching of tortured gears made Hox cringe and elicited an: "Ouch", from Linda. With all the explosions and gunshots now a whole ship's length away, the raiding party itself was strangely quiet. All but two drivers had shut down their engines. There were some painful moans, sighs of relief and the hysterical laughter of the Slab who had replaced Nelbert and was jovially slapping the high caliber machinegun.

Hox couldn't keep his eyes off the _Bacchanal_. He had seen ECHO pictures and even a hologram, he had heard the haiku reports about the task force's struggle to wrestle the hovercraft from the hands of another pirate gang in Wurmwater, but nothing had prepared him for this hulk. Literally. And they had actually managed to shock and awe the Hodunks, too, despite the jumbled odds. Overall, they had simply antedated the big raid. Now the clan knew that the Raiders had a movable fortress in the Dust and this was bound to make them tread lightly.

In the hangar bay, a ladder was extended to the ground and a team of medics poured from the ship. The first drivers crawled from their cockpits, stretched, tossed gloves, scarves and goggles aside. Men and women were gathering around the technicals to lift the wounded off the cargo areas.

Hox padded the barrel of his blemished launcher and when he withdrew his hand, he found his glove smoking. A quick checkup revealed the barrel to be sizzling hot. At first this didn't make any logical sense, and then he realized that the cooling system couldn't work with only half a barrel and the tubing ripped wide open. There was work to be done, but Hox didn't give a damn, as he dragged himself from the turret and jumped down on solid ground.  
Landsickness made him unsteady for a second, then Linda was there and made things worse by hugging him fiercely. They both staggered and fell to the ground, with Linda on top.

"That was rough", Hox mumbled and tried to get out of all his protective gear.

"Sorry", Linda replied and helped him back to his feet.

"That's not exactly what I was talking about", the mercenary continued and tossed his gas mask over his shoulder, unerring into the turret. "More... the whole raid."

For a moment he expected her to make a sarcastic remark about him complaining about her driving abilities and he wouldn't have held that against her, but she just nodded, before adding: "Yeah, that was blown a bit out of proportion."

They leaned back into a hug, remaining upright this time. He felt their hearts beating together, still frantic, her arms wrapped around him and he saw over her shoulder how the medics were carrying stretchers and providing first aid that went farther than the stem cell injection the worst cases had treated themselves with.

"How many dead?", he asked hoarsely.

"Eight, as far as I know."

"Just like in the old days."

"Hm. And we're still alive... despite a sawed-off grenade launcher."

"As I said. Just like in the old days."

Linda smiled and they shared a quick kiss, before walking over where two able bodied people could be put to good use.

* * *

Mitch Darsher sat cross legged atop his mesa, had his ECHO in his lap and studied a CAD model of his exo-skeleton. He couldn't sleep. All around him was the hissing and growling of agitated Spiderants.

Thanks to his suit he had reached the mesas quickly and without any incident, jump after jump after jump. He felt like a kangaroo. Climbing up had proven to be a little more difficult; the boosters in the exo-skeletons legs weren't exactly powerful enough to lift him all the way up to the flat top, so he had used the metal arms to climb the almost vertical wall. If necessary, he had punched holes into the rock in order to produce a hold.

Only after he had reached the top, which was about ten meters in diameter, he had noticed the commotion at the foot of the mesa. His climbing efforts had roused the local Spiderants who were now swarming around the rock formation. The smaller ones had tried to jump up, some of the bigger ones had shot webbing at him and neither had hit. He was simply out of reach.

Also, he was trapped for the time being. Power in his exo-skeleton was dangerously low after all the boosted jumps. He didn't have a spare energy core, leaving him with only one option to recharge his suit: The solar cells.

At night.

Yup, life truly was great.

The cells could work with almost any amount of light and Elpis was bright in the sky. But reloading the exo-skeleton by means of the moon and the brightest stars was slow work. Very slow work. Excruciatingly slow. And, courtesy to Pandora's day-night-cycle, Mitch had more than eighteen hours of nighttime left to enjoy, before the sun would make its cosmic cameo.

With a lot of time to kill and unable to sleep, Mitch started to plan further work on his exo-skeleton. There was always something to improve and his latest addition to the modified construction equipment, cuffs around the joints to keep the sand out, had already paid off big time.

He had just saved a creative blueprint, when the radio came alive: "Ham, this is Gods Eye! Be advised, I'm closing in on your position right now, so please don't shoot at me."

Mitch pressed the button for a response. "Gods Eye, this is Ham! Thanks for the call sign. And thanks for picking me up."

Loggins chuckled. "Never mind."

The engineer deconstructed his exo-skeleton and scanned the horizon. As the copter wasn't using any lights at all, it took him a while to spot it on its beeline course towards him. Half a minute later, the copter was hovering beside him, so he was eye to eye with the pilot, which of course was complicated by Loggins' flight helmet.

"You've attracted quite a fan base", the pilot said, pointing to the Spiderants below.

"How did the battle turn out?", Mitch asked.

"Oh, they lured them to Surprise Four and the Hodunks high-tailed it out of there. We've seven dead and a shitload of wounded. Hop on board, I'll bring you there."

"Harker's crew?"

"They abandoned the car. Two dead."

"Who?"

"Get on-fucking-board!"

Mitch jumped for the last time this night. And true to his newly found expertise on this matter, he didn't miss and landed safely on the bench for paratroopers. "Alright. Now speed-fucking-up."

"Engineers", Loggins sighed, while turning his bird back in the direction of Ellie's Garage. "Always the wise guys."


	12. Flashback: Takeover

Flashback: Takeover

Zero straightened up and politely knocked on the door that had been cut into the overturned shipwreck. Immediately a hatch opened beside the door and a triple barreled shotgun was shoved through it, pointing straight at the Vault Hunter. "What do you want?!", the resident of the hideout shouted. The wreck provided an interesting, metallic echo, but it was definitely a man talking, in his thirties maximum and probably out of good teeth.

"I mean you no harm / Please just answer my question / I'm hunting a ship."

"A ship, eh? Lots and lots of those around and you don't need to hunt any of them", the unseen man snarled. "They're just lying on the rocks, wherever the ocean dropped them off, when he upped sticks and left."

"That's why I'm asking: / Do you know the _Bacchanal_? / Big, brown hovercraft?"

"Yeah, I know the blasted thing! But I don't want to have anything to do with it. Don't go out that often. Just crazies and beasts and crazy beasts."

"So, you didn't see it?"

"Well, I wouldn't call it _seeing_."

"Please, enlighten me."

"Heard about it! The Mouse's Witnesses use their bragging rights to the fullest! Took the thing to the Rustyards. Anything else you want to annoy me with or could you be so kind as to get your ass off my front lawn?!"

"Thank you for your help/ I won't bother you again / Withal, clean your gun."

"Huh?" The shotgun disappeared and the hatch slammed shut. "Oh boy, the old iron is really in need! Thanks, stranger."

Zero turned and walked as far as the rickety fence, where thirty men and women in various heat defying outfits had been calmly waiting for the conversation to end.

"Well", Private First Class Andrew Sturmer remarked, fumbling with his headband, "that was remarkably informative."

"Finally", Boatswain Renjo added and looked back on the junkyard and all the inhabited shipwrecks they had visited. Most of them were intact. Five had been home to psychos and therefore been reduced to happily smoking ruins.

"Anyone ever heard of these Witnesses before?", Specialist Ina Heartforce asked from the depths of her yellow veil.

"Religious nut jobs", Private John "Joke" Carroda chimed in, who preferred his integral helmet to the caps, hats and sashes sported by the rest of the crew, because he had secretly managed to revive the air conditioner. "They believe a prophet called Mouse will come from the skies and make them masters of the known universe."

"Burning birds of prey, weapon vendors, now rodents. This planet has some strange religions", Mechanic Ashley Burrow muttered.

"Let's get back on board / We have a destination / Next stop, the Rustyards", Zero addressed his crew and marched back to their three sand skiffs. The hovercrafts had seen a good chunk of fighting during the full Pandoran day they had spent searching for the _Bacchanal_. Sandworms only, though. After the commotion about Captain Blade's treasure, the desert north of Oasis had gone pretty quiet. There just wasn't enough of anything out here to warrant staying behind, at least for the bigger gangs. The remaining inhabitants were reclusive and suspicious of everything. Or completely out of their mind. Or a combination.

However, there seemed to be enough sane men out there to operate an enormous hovercraft.

In hindsight, Zero thoroughly kicked himself for leaving the _Bacchanal_ unguarded in the desert. Granted, after the fight with the Leviathan they had had other things on their mind, but it was still unforgivable to leave something behind that equaled an aircraft carrier in terms of Pandoran Road War.

They had only come back for it, after the war with the Hodunks escalated beyond a mere nuisance. "These guys already knelt before Vallory, they're used to it. So we just need something to establish ourselves as a force worth kneeling before, something big and powerful that leaves these bandits surprised, scared and short a couple of limbs, if possible. I want them to surrender faster than Tediore to Vladof after the Battle of Dionysus", Lilith had explained vividly and sent Zero to get something that fit the bill.

The crew was by now pretty adept at stowing themselves away on the slim skiffs and they left the settlement behind quickly. Zero sat on a chest full of equipment, carefully watching the landscape speeding past. He imagined Wurmwater as it had been less than five years ago: A deep, vast ocean, the gateway to the thriving city of Oasis, crowded with ships on the surface and mighty Leviathans in the deeps, dotted with small islands and dangerous reefs, encrusted with barnacle and seaweed, where nowadays steep, jagged stone reached high into the sky. But neither climate nor sea level had taken kindly to the sudden change of the moon, when the Crackening had happened. Geostationary or not, Elpis still had an effect on Pandora and thus the ocean had, quoting the local with the dirty gun, "upped sticks".

"You think these zealots will put up a fight?", Renjo asked casually, but with an undeniable undertone of excitement.

"Maybe not", Carroda in the gunner's seat answered. "Fanatics are always prone to a good bluff or perhaps we can trade them somehow. But, well, you know how things go down here and if you want some advice about the social interaction with religious people on this planet, just ask Zero. He's got some stories to tell."

Zero turned his head slightly to look Renjo in the eye, who returned the gaze for a moment and then just slowly shook his head, without flinching. This was commendable, as eye contact with the faceless assassin usually sent the recipient running for the hills, but then again, most of them weren't native Pandorans who had sailed a boat into Split Skull Bay during the worst days of the Bloodshot occupation and subsequently loaded the goods waiting on the quay under constant attack, killing six bandits in the process.

"Look at that!", Squad Designated Marksman Charlie Suez yelled from the control stand. "This old hermit was right! If the _Bacchanal_ didn't bust through here, I don't want to know what did."

The sheet metal gate that blocked the canyon leading to the Rustyards was breached. As were the ramshackle huts and bridges guarding the bottleneck. Zero was surprised to see the pockmarks of detonations where the canyon had been enlarged, so the big hovercraft could fit through. These Witnesses were brighter and more organized than most Pandoran bandits.

"Let's stop in the breach / We will continue on foot / Scout the area!", Zero ordered.

"Shoot on sight?", Renjo chimed in.

"No", the assassin said with enough determination in his voice to settle the matter there and then.

"Technical personnel should hang a little back", Sturmer suggested via radio.

"A good plan indeed / Do not let yourselves be seen / Stealth is our best tool."

The soldiers quickly fanned out, creeping down into the ship graveyard. The techies stayed with the skiffs, although the natives among them were clearly itching to partake in the fight. Zero had gone to great lengths for his motley crew, carefully picking out good soldiers as well as mechanics (requiring him to threaten Scooter with a gun, as he had impressed everyone remotely competent for the work on Sanctuary), medics and sailors. Especially, these were people who could keep their mouths shut, so he didn't have to confiscate every ECHO communicator to make sure no one accidentally leaked information.

Leaving the protection of the canyon, Zero spotted the _Bacchanal_ immediately. The thrusters were turned off and the ship rested on braces and scaffolding, far enough away from the huts and houses of the ship graveyard to have a decent field of fire, in case anything living inside the gigantic wrecks decided to attack. There were sixteen people on the deck, three up on the quarterdeck and one in the aft hangar, though Zero suspected more in the bowels of the ship or somewhere in the graveyard. The new owners had clearly brought the hovercraft here to embattle it, as the wrecks provided a bountiful source of material. Metal parts were scattered around the scaffolding and the Witnesses had already added a figurehead in the form of a sandworm to the bow and something akin to a shrine in the middle of the deck.

The soldiers had stopped dead in their tracks and crouched close to the ground. Sturmer signaled the technical personnel to join them and they complied.

"What shall we do?", Carroda asked silently.

"...with the bleeding psycho, early in the morning", Specialist Marcos sang on and was ignored.

"Easy, shoot them from up here like rabid skags", Suez said who was calmly screwing a silencer on his "Pooshka" sniper rifle.

"It sounds quite tempting", Zero agreed. "Let me try something else though / I'll board, silently."

"Might as well, I certainly can't cross that much open ground unseen", Sturmer said. "Just give us a signal when to move in."

"Try getting closer / Start shooting, when things go wrong / You'll notice my act."

"Copy that", Suez confirmed, setting up a sharpshooter position.

Zero nodded wistfully and then he started to run, straight towards the hovercraft.

"So... when are you going to go?", Renjo asked somewhere behind him.

"He's already gone", Carroda chuckled and waved his hand through the hologram that was still standing back with the men.

By the time the cloak had used up all its energy, Zero had reached the stern of the _Bacchanal_. Looking back he chastised himself for leaving one, faint boot print in a small spot of loose sand. It was virtually invisible to anyone who didn't know what it was, but perfection was decidedly something else.

He was basically below the ship now. Silently the assassin started to climb the scaffolding and eventually the stern, passing the now empty hangar and quickly reaching the bulwark beneath the quarterdeck. The cloak was still reloading, but Zero was comfortable with waiting where he was. No one had seen him. Her looked back towards the canyon, delighted by the fact that his crew was closing in as quietly as humanly possible. Granted, he could spot them easily, but he knew what he was looking for and he had the advantage of training, technology and unmatched eyesight.

The cloak hummed readiness and Zero activated it, somersaulted over the railing, weaved past the three men on the quarterdeck and jumped to the seventh rung of the ladder leading up to the crow's nest. Not even out of breath he reached the top of the ladder, still cloaked, observed the men below him on the deck, decided where to land and jumped down, uncloaking in mid-air.

After all the battles on Pandora, all the bandits, soldiers and beasts, killing a large quantity of enemies all on his own had surprisingly decreased in being a challenge to Zero. The perfection of a headshot from a mile distance, the surgical precision of a katana thrust, all that was still enormously satisfactory, but the assassin had decided that the biggest challenge on Pandora was to settle a conflict without violence. Sniping everyone on board this vessel with just one clip of ammunition wasn't half as interesting as trying to talk the Witnesses into surrendering the ship without one shot fired.

Zero landed with soft knees, his reinforced boots made the first sound they had made in a while when they collided with the metal of the deck and made it reverberate. To the zealots it must have looked, as if he had literally fallen from the sky. There were now seventeen of them on the main deck and they looked shocked, which was a nice start.

"Rejoice, my children", he said, drawing himself up proudly. "The great Mouse is among you / The wait is over."

The expressions around him turned from shock to surprise, disbelief and puzzlement. There were only men, wrapped in white sashes, five had shields on them, all carried firearms in their belts or on their backs and twelve of them were armed with long steel hooks. Still, no one said a word and Zero continued.

"Trust merits reward / I will lead you to rule the world / Your dreams will come true." He stepped forwards and the men nervously backed away. This was getting better by the second. "Our future..."

"Hey, excuse me a moment?!" A man came running from the deckhouse. He wasn't yet thirty, wore a skintight black suit, his eyes were of a mesmerizing blue and a strange, transparent mask covered the lower half of his face, with little tubes going up into his nostrils. The other zealots quickly made way for the newcomer and bowed their heads.

"You must be a priest", Zero decided and looked the young man in the eye. To his credit, he didn't withdraw. "You have lead my people well."

"I'm not a priest!", the man shouted indignantly. "I am the great prophet Mouse!"

There was an uneasy pause. Zero cocked his head. "Are you sure 'bout that?"

"He is the one foretold", another believer agreed.

"Foretold for centuries", the prophet added arrogantly. "I am the Shortening of the Way, my army of free men will wage a holy war to make me Emperor of the universe! And that makes you, sir, a dirty impostor and heretic who will be..."

Zero drew a pistol, still amazed at how awkwardly his plan had backfired, and killed the prophet with a single headshot, that left the mask in perfect working condition. "Yeah, yeah, whatever / Trust me, he was a liar / I am the prophet."

"No, you aren't!", a zealot yelled and brandished his hook. "He showed us! He called for the beasts of the deep sand and they came to him and..."

A shot rang and pierced the man's throat. The believer crumbled on the deck, gargling and sputtering and eventually fainting from blood loss. Zero made a mental note to commend Suez on his timing and chide him for not hitting the head.

"You dare to doubt me?!", he roared, raising his arms over his head. "Six hells of pain shall unleash! / Unless you kneel down!"

But the parish of the tragically deceased prophet Mouse was way past their boiling point. "He's got a sniper up the slope!", one of them shouted.

"Death to the heretics!", another screamed and swung his hook against Zero.

The assassin took a second to sigh exasperated, then he drew his katana, blocked the hook and shot the attacker with the same pistol that had ended his prophet's life. The remaining fifteen men pounced on him with drawn weapons and earsplitting battle cries. They were utterly confused when their hooks and bullets passed ineffectively through the hologram in their midst and then a third men died, as a katana pierced his back. At the same moment Zero's crew emerged from the deckhouse, armed for close combat and it became rather bloody on the deck. Hooks, bayonets and barrels clashed, as the men lunged at each other in the confined space. Zero ignored the main carnage and swiftly climbed back on the quarterdeck, where three more zealots were hastily grabbing weapons. The assassin cut them down with ease, all the while listening intently to the fight below, in case his help was required. It wasn't. From the corner of his eye he spotted a fanatic who was lifted off his feet and over the bulwark by a shotgun blast. He heard sporadic sniper fire, but clearly Suez was afraid to hit his own people, which made him a bad marksman in Zero's opinion.

The fight didn't last long and no zealot survived it. Zero's crew had suffered a number of wounds, but no one was in mortal danger. Renjo, whose upper arm had been ripped open by a hook, was grinning from ear to ear. "I can't believe it! I just boarded a pirate ship! Now that's something I can tell my children."

Clean up was in full swing, when they were joined by the rest of the crew. Carroda had led a quick search party into the belly of the ship, turning up empty handed. Marcos and Renjo were singing "Bleeding Psycho" at the top of their lungs while throwing bodies over board. The medics took care of the wounded, while most of the mechanics disappeared into the engine rooms without even visiting the deck. Zero used the break to ECHO Lilith on an encrypted channel.

Just when he finished, he spotted the first Witnesses coming back from the wrecks, laden with engine parts and sheet metal. They were vigilant enough to notice the bodies on the ground and stayed behind cover, their numbers slowly growing. Some zealots scanned the _Bacchanal_ through field glasses, others readied weapons, but they were probably still waiting for their full force to arrive.

Zero beckoned Suez to come over and pointed at the gathering believers. "Take them out at will / A good chance to hone your skills / Try headshots only."

The designated marksman gave him a look somewhere between fear and irritation before he rested his rifle on the railing. He waited, swiveled his gun on its bipod and then a zealot flung a metal container at the ship, which caused Suez to instinctively shoot him. Right between the eyes. The container rolled through the sand and came to rest a hundred paces from the hovercraft, way too big for a grenade and way too lightweight for a bigger bomb. Then the casing unfolded and revealed a strange metal construction that looked like a hydraulic press, which started thumping the ground at a high frequency.

"What the hell is that?!", Suez gasped and stared at the metal thing.

"We'll figure it out / In any case, a nice shot / Fit for a sniper", Zero commended the soldier, who just looked at him blankly.

The construction didn't do anything else than pummel the ground and the zealots were retreating deeper into the graveyard now. The little thing was clearly supposed to cause something the believers didn't want to be near, but Zero failed to see what it could possibly be.

A hatch opened in the middle of the deck and revealed a very surprised Bob Illner, a mechanic from Elpis and their greatest authority on the issue of hover thrusters. "Oh. So that's where this leads." Then he spotted Zero. "Hey, chief, quick update: The engines are looking good, we're ready to give it a burl. Ash and Greg will come up in a jiffy to check on the thrusters, we can't ignite recumbent plasma before making sure the magnetic locks ..."

"No more tech jargon", Zero sighed. He already knew, way, way too much about digistruct technology and mechanical engineering, courtesy to Gaige's ramblings. "Just do what you're here to do: / Get us moving, fast."

"Ace!" Illner closed the hatch behind him and Zero noticed disaster approaching from the farthest corner of his eye, just before it hit the _Bacchanal_ headfirst. The ship shook violently. Scaffolding screeched and snapped. People staggered, Specialist Heartforce slipped in a puddle of blood and landed prone on the deck.

Zero had fought the Leviathan, but the Sandworm that had just burst from the ground may have given the guardian of Blade's treasure a run for his money in terms of size. It was at least five meters in diameter and the fanged open mouth easily measured two more from jaw to jaw. The beast had rammed the _Bacchanal_ and now it was menacingly rearing its head over the railing. The situation reminded Zero strangely of old depictions of sea serpents, as they attacked the ships of hapless explorers.

The Sandworm wound up and spit a ball of acid at them. Even Zero dove for cover, as the missile impacted and green, sizzling liquid was flying every which way. Sturmer screamed horribly, as a single drop hit him on the forehead, but Medic Glenn Erics was there to empty his entire canteen into the soldier's face, diluting the chemical to a bearable concentration.

Zero ripped open the hatch. "Start the engines _now_!", he commanded. "Quick update: Sandworm attack / We will distract it."

"You better do that", Illner agreed meekly. "The thrusters need to be lit from outside, as..."

Zero slammed the hatch shut. He didn't fear for his own life, but he saw the pattern the acid had eaten into the metal. This beast could seriously damage the _Bacchanal_ and it was still the goal of their mission. The rest of the crew had unanimously started to pepper the worm with everything they had, but its scales proved to be resilient even to Torgue-ammunition. Zero joined his men in the effort, aiming for the head high above the railing.

"Useless!", Suez shouted, sounding surprisingly calm.

Zero turned his head sharply and flashed the marksman a question mark on his faceplate, still shooting.

"I already emptied a magazine into its mouth. If it has a brain, it's not up there and this thing is so big it will rather die from lead poisoning than from any bullet wounds. Cover!"

Acid splashed over the deck. Zero ducked behind the mast, quickly figuring out something else. Even if they couldn't kill it that way, destroying the creatures head would rob it of its main tool to cause havoc. The assassin grabbed a longshot grenade from his SDU and flung it unerring into the worms maw. He saw the explosion, but instead of doing vital damage, it just made the creature angry. It screamed and jabbed at the deck, nearly crushing Renjo who barely rolled out of the way.

"Ah... thrusters..." Zero turned to see mechanics Ashley Burrow and Greg Kowalski who were gawping at the chaotic sight of the deck.

"Starboard engine's free / You can ignite it right now / I'll clear port for you", Zero explained to the startled machinists and headed for the railing. The worm jabbed again at the ship and rocked it on its braces. Tortured metal snapped. The ship tilted to starboard and then suddenly righted itself, as the hover thrusters ignited on this side. Capsizing was averted. For now.

Zero activated his ECHO while carefully studying the Sandworm. "Attention all crew / To your stations, leave the worm / Get ready to move."

"The worm is kind of in the way", Carroda objected.

"I'll handle the beast", Zero reassured the Private and tucked a rocket launcher out of his SDU. There was no weapon he loathed more. It wasn't a tool for a killer, but for a destroyer. Still, he needed the worm to look his way.

The rocket barrage did two things: it caused the first visible damage to the worm, blowing off a feeler and a chunk of what could be called its forehead, and it made the creature turn to Zero. The worm attacked, mouth wide open, ready to swallow the Vault Hunter whole.

He jumped at precisely the right moment and landed on the Sandworm's head, which was treacherous footing. Zero buried his katana in the soft, unprotected flesh between the scales, for his plan as well as for support. The worm went ballistic. It withdrew from the ship, taking a couple of sails with it in the process, and shook its head violently, but Zero held on with an iron grip, cutting deeper and wider, forcing the scales apart. Green blood gushed over his boots and made the footing even worse, but finally the cut was to his liking. He quickly shoved his remaining grenades into the wound and only pulled the pin on the last one. Then, Zero yanked his sword free and let go, sliding down the side of the bucking Sandworm as fast as gravity would allow him.

Behind him, the worm's head exploded into a mist of green goo and splinters of the scales. Suddenly lacking a maxilla, it couldn't even scream in pain. It just wobbled, like a garden hose losing pressure, and then it hastily burrowed.

The desert was tinted green in a radius of five meters and sweeping his fingers over his faceplate, Zero was not surprised to see that he too had been given a paintjob. He turned slowly to see the _Bacchanal_ hovering free, two meters above ground and already going about. The assassin flashed a smiley on his faceplate, then he started to run after the hovercraft.

Carroda threw him a rope and by the time the ship had turned around, Zero was standing on the deck again, green liquid dripping off his suit and everyone regarding him with an incredibly awed expression. Even Marcos had stopped his singing.

"Status?", Zero asked.

"Lots of warning lights in the engine rooms, but nothing critical", Carroda answered carefully, as if he was handling a wild Skag. "Renjo has the helm. We'll proceed to rig the remaining sails on the foremast."

"Excellent." The Vault Hunter veered away from the Private.

"What about the Witnesses?", Suez added, equally as cautiously.

Zero gave this some thought. Their prophet was dead, if he actually had been one was anyone's guess. They had learned how to call a big worm from the deep, but they decidedly hadn't tamed them. "I'd say, leave them be / Without their prophet, they're weak / Just men of the sands." And with this Zero disappeared into the deckhouse, in search of a bucket to wash off the Sandworm's blood.

* * *

A/N: For some odd reasons I'm adding a Dune disclaimer here. I don't own a syllable of the Dune books and not a frame of the movies and I will never monetize anything that resembles characters or events from these works. Call me paranoid, but a stitch in time safes nine, right? Thanks for reading as always, cheers!


	13. Chapter 12: Arrival

Chapter 12: Arrival

"Excuse me, you want to what?", Lilith said with a wicked grin on her face. "Still couldn't hear you, I apologize for the bad connection. Oh! Negotiate. Well, I don't think I'm in the mood for negotiations right now. I've got lots of other calls incoming, people from Hollow Point, Jacob's Cove, Prosperity Junction, they want to discuss trade agreements, as the Hodunks seem unable to provide goods north of the Dust anymore... No, really, you are able? ... I wouldn't have guessed. What with all the canceled convoys? What with this huge, huge armada amassing south of Goose's Roost... please don't act as if you thought you could keep it a secret, it makes you look even dumber than you actually are... Oh but I'm afraid I'm not afraid of your little get-together in the middle of the desert. Fun fact: You can't beat the _Angel II_ as it is and another fun fact, you are unable to acquire anything to harm her... So that's why you want to negotiate, I see. Well, that shouldn't be too much of a negotiation in that case. You answer to us from now on. Like you answered to Vallory... I'll go out on a limb here and predict she'll not be coming back, so you better listen: No more attacks on our men or facilities. No involvement in the Eridium trade. We get a proper danegeld from you..." Lilith's face fell considerably, as she listened for a while. "Please tell me you own a dictionary of sorts. No? Ever considered asking the goddamn ECHOnet? We want protection money from you, do you understand now? Beautiful! Furthermore, when we ask you to fight for our cause, you better do it... No, this does _not_ work the other way around... Okay, I'll admit, the Sawteeth may be a mutual point of interest. And now inform you clansmen, goodbye, sir."

"I would have liked to have seen his face", Maya admitted, while Lilith leaned back against the Holo-Table with a ridiculously satisfied expression on her face. "So... peace at last?"

The red Siren snorted. "You bet. Next thing we know, the Stalkers will develop an immunity to rabies and start munching on grass. And the Watcher will drop by to cancel the oncoming war he was talking about. And the Spiderants..."

"I get it."

The ECHO Lilith had dropped on the table came alive with another call. She picked up absentmindedly. "Who is it?"

"Corazza Stinger-N347 asking for landing permission!", the voice of a teenage girl boomed through the speakers. "Never thought I'd say this, but this seriously feels like coming home."

"Gaige!", Maya shouted excitedly and practically leaped out of her chair. "Nice to hear from you again! How was your space trip?"

"Awesome! This ship is _comfortable_! Complete with whirlpool and med-bay and the _food_. I have vigorously defended some of this stuff from a certain ex-soldier, so you could have a taste of it as well. It's amazing, really, not to mention all the little gimmicks and gizmos everywhere to make life a tidbit more comfortable..."

"Yeah, I get the picture", Lilith remarked, dryly. "How's you prisoner?"

"Confined to her room. I have to admit, if prison on Eden was only half as nicely furnished as Lady Moneybags' holding cell, I would never have gone Vault Hunting."

"You've got an ETA for me?"

"Less than half an hour. We've already established contact with ground control."

"Wonderful! See you then."

"Copy that! Guys, I'm totally excited to see you again! Axton? Want to say hi?"

"Get out of the cockpit! Ground Control, please repeat, are you telling me there's a Rakk Hive on my parking spot? No? Ah, you're glad we're _back alive_. Why yes, so are we."

"He doesn't want to say hi, it seems. Well, see you!" Gaige hung up.

Silence reigned for a happy, blissful moment.

"Well, so we've got the team back together", Maya finally said. She couldn't keep the grin from her face.

"Yes", Lilith replied bitterly. " _You_ do..."

Hearing this tone of voice again, Maya made the split-second decision not to let it slip this time and continued: "... and you don't and never will again. And you desperately try to find someone to blame. That's why you've been hunting down Athena. That's why you put a bounty on Lady Hammerlock. But it's not that you need to find the culprit: You're merely blaming someone else, other than the one responsible for the rise of Handsome Jack and thus... the death of Roland."

"Someone else", Lilith repeated. "You seem to know an awful lot about me. How comes? Monastery training? Your mind control powers?"

"Deduction on the basis of your actions and moods since the day the Warrior died. You blame yourself for Roland's death. You were the one to slam this magical Vault Symbol into Jack's face. And you think, if you hadn't done..."

"Shut up!", Lilith roared. Her outline flickered purple and for a split second her wings appeared. Maya swallowed hard, but she didn't back down. Her left hand carefully reached for the place beyond places and pressed slightly against the barrier, just in case. It occurred to her that it was probably a little redundant to trap someone in another dimension who regularly phased through this same dimension.

"Holla, chicas, what's going on up there?!", a sleepy voice emanated from downstairs.

"Nothing! But would you care to finally leave your cot? Gaige and Axton will be landing soon!", Maya shouted back.

"Ha! I'll be right up and have a little... wait a second! I'm quite sure I had trousers yesterday..."

The Sirens turned to face each other again.

"Where were we?", Maya asked.

"At you being right and me being a stubborn bitch", Lilith admitted surprisingly and slumped into a chair. No more flickering, no more anger. Instead she heaved a deep sigh and hung her head. "It's not even a matter of opinion. I was part of that little triumvirate that tried to stop Jack back on Elpis and eventually made him paranoid and vengeful. I was the one... personally... to drive him over the edge. If it hadn't been for me..." She couldn't finish and changed the subject: "I thought it would end, when I finally killed Jack. It didn't. I trudge on... I... I honor Roland's legacy, I keep the Raiders together... do you know Brick had to teach me quite a lot about leadership? Brick! And all the while I _know_ that I am the one to unleash all this madness upon us. That I could have prevented it."

"How would you have known?", Maya asked softly. "If you hadn't conspired to blow up the Destroyer's Eye, Jack would have had an Eridian laser at his disposal to take potshots at whole towns. If you had killed Jack in the Vault, Hyperion would still have invaded the planet. In fact, did it ever occur to you that you may have done something good back then?"

"Who would I be kidding?"

"Well, think about this: What if Jack had spent any more time with this knowledge symbol? It showed him the Warrior, but by now we've learned of thousands of other Vaults out there. In fact, even though he knew about the Warrior, he had to spent a couple of years looking for it. You cut off the transmission. Remember what Athena said about Zarpedon? About her certainty when talking about future events? The Vault did that to her. What if Jack had gathered the same powers? Personally, I don't think we would have lasted against an omniscient Handsome Jack with detailed information about the future."

"Now you're theorizing", Lilith complained, still not looking up.

"Validly so. And you have to cut the blame in any case. You are not responsible for Roland's death. You are not responsible for New Haven. For anything down here. The guilty one was a man who was unstable to begin with, a man who experimented on his own daughter. You didn't give him his egomania or his taste for violence. And neither did Athena or Lady Hammerlock or Claptrap or... anyone else you might want to take revenge on. The past is the past and no one can change it. There's no use in pondering the ifs, especially not for Vault Hunters."

"Thank you", Lilith said after a while, finally looking up, but when Maya tried to look her in the eye, she had the distinctive feeling her friend wasn't seeing anything in the room. "You've got a point or two. Definitely. But I can't just un-believe what I've told myself for almost half a year now. It just doesn't work that way."

"I'll help you", Maya responded quickly. "Whenever you need me, I'll be there to tell you the truth. Or, at least, what you need to believe is the truth."

"Oh, now I _need_ to?"

"For your own sake. You're able to function, no doubt about that. But it is decidedly not healthy and I can't stand seeing you suffering anymore. You're hurting yourself with that mindset and only yourself. Well, and the occasional rogue Atlas assassin."

This actually warranted a little smile from Lilith. "I'll take you up on that offer."

Maya nodded, content. She had been waiting for an opportune moment to talk this through with Lilith since she had heard Athena's story. And now it had gone far more smoothly than she would have imagined. Sure, it would take a lot more time and talking to cure Lilith from herself, but a first step had been taken.

Lilith' ECHO displayed yet another incoming call, but the redhead was still rather absentminded and Maya picked up. "Crimson Raiders Headquarters, you're speaking with Colonel Maya."

Lilith raised her head an mouthed: "Colonel?" Maya just smiled back.

"Ah... Omega Squad Sergeant Athena reporting in." It sounded mechanical, as if an audio message was being played, and surprised at the same time. "I am requesting Fast Travel clearance for Sanctuary for myself and another person."

"Of course. Sorry, we should have done that before giving you leave." Maya stepped over to a console on the wall and called up Fast Travel Control. One of the first things the Raiders had done after occupying the city was to isolate the Fast Travel Station; if someone interacted physically with it, he could still enter the network, but without clearance by the system admin no one was able to venture to the city. "I have your ID here... and you're cleared. Care to try?"

"I'm already at the Station and the test is... successful, I'm able to select Sanctuary as a destination now."

"Okay, next, who is you attendant?"

There was a slight pause. "Springs, Janey. Registration number ELP11201414. ECHO call sign emporiumostuffECHOelp."

"Shouldn't take too long." In fact it was about to take a while, as Maya wasn't familiar with the interface. "How were your three days out?"

"They... they were great, really. Thanks for asking." Athena had decidedly not expected friendly small-talk and sounded rather cautious.

"Did you hear what happened to Old Haven?", Maya continued, who had eventually disinterred the registration menu. Athena's ID had been in the system's data logs, as she had already used the Station in Sanctuary, but in Springs' case Maya had to fill in the data manually.

"Yes... heard and seen it all. Rather unbelievable. I'd ask why they did it, but this is Pandora. So I don't."

"I guess she doesn't have to", Lilith added sarcastically from her corner.

"Say again?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing at all." Maya deftly pressed the button that would allow Janey to use the Fast Travel in Sanctuary, only to learn that the terminal would need to download all the necessary scans from her latest uplink, as the Sanctuary Station didn't yet know how to construct a Janey Springs. "Okay, your friend will have to wait for another five minutes, then she should be free to come here as well."

"Thank you... Colonel?"

"Just Maya is fine. I was only messing around."

"Well then... thank you, Maya."

"Sounds about right. And thank _you_ for sticking to your parole. Nice to see you're dependable."

A very long pause, then the connection was lost.

"I think we'll need another accommodation for our prisoner and her guest", Maya said, turning to Lilith who was looking, as if a Skag had relieved itself in her boots. "Don't give me that glare. Firstly, it's not my fault she didn't run for it so you could have a pretext to kill her after all and secondly we have established that Athena is merely a victim of your urge to project blame onto other people who, while not innocent in the classical sense of the word, can't rightfully be burdened with the amounts of guilt you assign them. So we can at least be nice to her."

Lilith' look was one of utter confusion, before she shook her head and laughed a little. "You'll snap me out of it, whether I want it or not, isn't it?"

"Precisely! And now, let's go and meet our space-travelers!"

Downstairs Salvador had, thankfully, found his trousers again and was scraping the remains of his pasta-and-cheese ration out of a battered pot. He quit eating the second the Sirens emerged on the stairs and jumped from his chair. "Right then, ready to rock and roll! You know, I'm so thrilled to see my amigos again, I don't have the urge to shoot something before midday. That's a strange feeling, really."

"Well, there are rumors about a Rakk Hive at the spaceport", Maya said with a half-smile.

"You're joking", Salvador announced and narrowed his eyes dangerously.

"Let's bring some guns and find out", the Siren replied sweetly.

"Lady, me without guns would be like you without your tattoos!"

They strode over the central plaza towards Pierce Station. The sun was rising and the only people outside where a couple of mechanics who were visibly enjoying the fresh air after a long night of work in the ship's bowels. When they reached the Fast Travel, however, someone was already waiting for them, drumming his metallic fingers on the top of the console.

"Good morning, Sir Hammerlock", Maya greeted, when she spotted the explorer, but he cut her off with an unusual sharpness to his voice: "Good morning. I've heard the most interesting rumors concerning our mutual friends Axton and Gaige. From what I've gathered, they are arriving today in a commandeered spaceship and they are bringing a prisoner with them. Is this research correct?"

Lilith' face turned deadpan in an instant, while Maya and Salvador merely shared a surprised look. "Why, yes, that's all very true", Salvador replied.

"And does this prisoner happen to be the legal owner of the planet Hermes?", Hammerlock continued.

"Yep", Lilith said, still with her best poker face on.

"I take it you're not going to hang her in a public location?"

"Nope", Lilith answered.

"Well, under those circumstances, I'll be leaving for Aegrus and hope the savages haven't burned down my hunting lodge yet. If you need me, you know where to find me, but it's bad enough to be on the same planet as my sister, I'm not going to stay on the same continent as long as I can help it." He paused and looked at Maya and Salvador. "You might be thinking that I'm overreacting, but you - haven't - met - her - yet." He underlined every word by punching another dial on the console, eventually recalling his desired destination. "Goodbye, my valiant friends."

Maya watched, as Sir Hammerlock raised his mechanical hand in salute and disintegrated into a stream of blue data. "Am I the only one right now rejoicing in the fact that she is an only child?"

"Hey, I love my hermanos!", Salvador chimed in, sounding a little hurt.

"Maybe I should have warned him", Lilith pondered, while dialing up their destination down in the Highlands from the Fast Travel Menu. "I just fail to see the difference it would have made."

* * *

The Crimson Raider Spaceport was a marvel of salvage. Everything from launch pads to immense radar disks to the hilarious amounts of steel had been brought here from as far away as Three Horns Divide. But building the cosmodrome anywhere else had been out of the question. It was necessary to keep the off-world connections close and defendable. There were guard towers with snipers, who shot every Stalker that got within half a kilometer. The ground was covered with six centimeters worth of salvaged and melted down steel to keep the Threshers out. The port housed Ground Control which kept an open ear and eye towards space, an Eridium refinery to provide booster fuel, and last but not least accommodations with running water, electricity and ECHOnet connection. The port was furthermore by far the best looking facility the Raiders owned. After all, it was the first impression smugglers, fencers and black marketeers would get.

When Maya, Lilith and Salvador materialized, they were greeted by the usual bustle of the sedulous spaceport. The air was alive with shouts and engine noise of one kind or another. Four small ships and three shuttles from bigger freighters were docked. Trolleys were moving around, stacked with crates and barrels, rumbling to and fro between the gawping mouths of the ships' cargo areas and the warehouses of the spaceport. Claxons blared, as a goliath crane moved into position to deliver a big, clunky spare part to the engine room airlock of one of the docked freighters. Crimson Raider quartermasters were arguing with ship captains, emigrants endured the safety instructions and ship protocols read by watchful first mates, crew members were storing cargo, checking their ships' exterior or desperately trying to ignore the effects of the Pandoran alcohol consumed the night before.

"We've come places", Salvador said, looking around admiringly. "We actually build something for once! While our expertise is usually breaking down stuff. Oh man, I need to shoot something quickly, I'm getting philosophical."

"Join the snipers", Maya suggested, pointing to the watchtowers.

"Nah, sniping is all about precision and waiting and _work_. For me, it's just not that funny. And it's not practical to use two scoped weapons at the same time. Speaking of snipers, where the hell are the others?"

"What others?" Lilith made a step backwards to avoid a hover-trolley.

"Zero and Krieg of course. I called them, while you were busy doing leaderish things upstairs. Thought they wouldn't want to miss their amigos coming back."

"Good thinking", Maya agreed and instantaneously felt guilty, because she hadn't had the same notion.

A speaker started to blare: "Attention! Attention! All personnel clear docking platform three! Spacecraft landing imminent! Clear docking platform three! Please put on your ear muffs! If you don't, don't expect us to turn up the volume on the next announcement."

A sleek, wedge-shaped spacecraft appeared from behind a mountain range and approached rapidly. Control lights started to flash around the docking platform, as the ship crossed the invisible border wherein passive radar could detect it. Maya watched, as the ship's hover thrusters lit up around the underbelly and the main engine was shut off, in order to facilitate landing. Floating in mid-air, the craft did the remaining hundred meters to the docking platform at a snail's pace, until the pilot had maneuvered it very carefully within the reach of the magnetic locks and could finally allow the spaceport's computer to take over.

"Remind me to invest in a landing assistance program", Lilith said, while the Corazza Stinger touched down. Everyone else at the port had stopped work to gape. The craft was clearly not a freighter and apart from a huge anarchist A spray painted on the bow it looked much cleaner and neater than any of the other ships currently at display.

"I'm thoroughly awed. / That is one fancy spaceship. / Where did they get it?"

Maya didn't even bother to jump and merely turned to see Zero standing next to them. "They'll probably want to tell that story themselves. Good of you to come."

"How could I not come? / After all that we've been through! / We're a team of friends."

"Ha! So we are!", Salvador shouted. The thrusters of the Corazza were shut down one by one, but the Vault Hunters only started to walk over, when the control lights went out, indicating the ship was now secured to the docking position, without the danger of it slipping and crushing someone (which had happened in the past. Twice).

The airlock opened with an elongated hiss, as pressure was equalized, and revealed Gaige, wearing a silken dressing gown over her usual attire. "Good morning, my ladies, my lord, my... whatever you are", she waved in the direction of Zero, "welcome to our humble ship. Please take off your boots before entering and under no circumstances put your feet on the table." Then she laughed, threw the gown in a corner and jumped out. "Great to see the lot of you again... humph."

Salvador had rushed forwards and wrapped her into a bear hug. "Ha, ha! Great to see you too, hermana!"

Axton was the next one to climb out of the airlock, Lady Hammerlock in tow whose wrists were bound and who looked around as if she was inspecting a restroom that was decidedly not to her liking. "Quite a welcoming committee", the commando said, pushing his prisoner towards Lilith and saluting in front of the Siren. "Lilith, I think you wanted to talk to this piece of nobility."

"So I do", Lilith replied, carefully sizing the baroness up.

"What about the bounty?"

"Free board and lodge, no port dues for your ship and free refueling, deal?"

"Sounds good." Axton left the two women to their staring match and shook hands with Zero and Maya. "How are you doing?"

"Not too bad", Maya said, while Zero simply flashed a smiley on his faceplate.

"Where is Krieg?", Gaige asked, finally free of Salvador's jovial welcome.

"I asked him to come, he was probably distracted by some bandits along the way", Salvador said, shrugging. "Can't blame him, really."

"Where did you get this spaceport from?", Axton interrupted. "Granted, the guidance system is a pain in the ass, but apart from that this looks rather professional."

"Well, the Raiders built it in our absence", Maya explained.

"Their work is striking. / All of our outposts flourish. / Most foes are beaten", Zero added.

Up on the nearest watchtower, the snipers became agitated, pointing to something in the distance without raising their weapons, though. They turned and started shouting to the people on the ground, motioning for them to clear a path and then a car engine revving in highest gear drowned out the usual noise of the spaceport, as an Outrunner burst into the perimeter. The car swerved horribly, toppled a couple of boxes and came to a screeching halt in front of the gathered Vault Hunters. The driver stood in his cabin and beat his chest like a seven foot tall, yellow skinned gorilla. "My blood is running free over earless armadillos and it wallows in exultation!", Krieg thundered, fixing the gaze of his one good eye on Gaige and Axton.

"He thinks it's good to see you again", Maya translated as usual.

"I get that a lot lately", Axton commented.

"I'll just have a guess: / You forgot to Fast Travel. / For the third time now?" Zero sounded amused.

"Blue tunnel and yellow steel! Blue sky and yellow sun! We choose", Krieg said, climbing out of his car and walking over to his friends. "And he was afraid of me!"

"Still going strong on the split personality", Gaige decided.

"Split, spit, sit, pit, it, t!", the psycho added. "The rustbeard dropped delicious dust on the box we all came from, this time and maybe again!"

"Whatever, mate." Axton boxed Krieg jovially on the arm and quickly backed away, as the big man returned the favor.

"Now", Gaige said, rubbing her hands together. "Where is this creature you have been talking about, and the war it foresaw?"

"Let's get back to town", Zero suggested. "Lots of catching up to do. / I'm quite excited." To stress his last stanza, he projected another smiley: :-D.

"The team's back together!", Salvador shouted and waved a random weapon from his SDU through the air. "Whatever may come, we'll take it on with a vengeance!"

"We will", Maya said. "We'll definitely do that."

* * *

THE JOURNEY CONTINUES... IN BORDERLANDS 3! SEE YOU ALL THERE! OUTRO JINGLE!

* * *

A/N: I apologise for the considerable time between updates. Exams are a pain in the behind. Anyhow, I hope you liked the story, thanks to everyone who has read this far, thanks to all you followers and reviewers, and special thanks to YOU! I'm going to edit little tidbits in the first couple of chapters (which were intelligently written before Tales of the Borderlands was fully available), but generally, this story is finished.

Take care!


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